A Half Forgotten Song (34 page)

“There are nights in Blacknowle, in the summer, when perhaps there are this many stars. Perhaps; but the sky is never as black, and the stars never as bright,” said Dimity. “Doesn’t it get cooler, in the nighttime?”

“By dawn it will be, yes, and out in the desert it gets freezing. But for a long time after the sun sets, it stays warm here in the city. The buildings trap the heat,” said Delphine. Dimity looked down at the narrow streets, and could almost see the hot air lying there, fat and supine as an overfed dog. Suddenly she was so weary she could hardly stand, and had to lean against the balustrade for support. “Are you all right? Have you drunk enough water?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“You have to drink lots here, even if you don’t feel thirsty. The heat makes you faint, otherwise. I’ll fetch you some.”

“Get me some, too, Delphine!” said Élodie, still upside down as her sister left the room.

T
he girls stayed up late, Élodie and dimity listening, rapt, to Delphine’s lurid tales of white slavers in Morocco capturing European men and forcing them to work until they died, building palaces and roads and whole cities. Capturing European women and forcing them to marry fat, ugly sultans; to live forever in the harem, never allowed outside. Eventually, the two younger girls surrendered to sleep, but in spite of her weariness Dimity was awake for much longer, after the whole house had fallen quiet. She stayed at the window and clasped the warm stone of the balustrade, breathing in deeply, trying to pick individual scents from the warm, loaded air.

There were roses, and jasmine, too; the resinous smell of cypress trees, almost like the sea-battered pines of Dorset but subtly different. On the breeze came a rich, herby smell, like sage or rosemary, as well as the stink of hot animal skins and manure; human sewage, too—a privy smell, sweet and familiar, not constant but rising up now and then. There was a sharp, leathery, meaty smell she could not guess the source of; a metallic smell that was almost like blood and made her uneasy; a prickly scent of spices she half recognized from the food they had eaten and the
pastilla
Celeste often cooked at Littlecombe. And beneath all these new things was a striking absence—the missing salty breath of the sea. Thinking of Littlecombe, and Blacknowle, gave Dimity a jolt, and she noticed that they seemed to have receded far into the distance—not just in miles but in time, too. As if her whole life up until that point had been a dream, one that was now fading fast from memory the way all dreams do upon waking. This was a wholly new life; one where the heartbeat of the sea no longer tethered her, no longer trapped her own into keeping time with it. One where she was free and unfettered, and unfamiliar, and different. She gripped the stone tightly, and felt so happy that she wasn’t sure she could stand it.

A
fter breakfast in the morning, Celeste readied her two daughters and prepared to set off for her family’s house, outside the walls of Fez el-Bali in the more spacious streets of Fez el-Djid. She combed the girls’ hair and clipped it neatly back from their faces with quick, tense fingers, tweaking their cotton skirts and blouses into neater lines. Dimity looked down at her own attire—the same worn-out felt skirt she often wore at home—and smoothed it down self-consciously.

“Will I look all right, dressed as I am?” she asked anxiously, and Celeste looked up with a frown until a look of comprehension replaced it.

“Oh, Mitzy! I am sorry, but for this visit I must go with just my girls. It has been more than a year since I saw my parents . . . And after such a long time the first meeting should be just for us. Do you understand?” She came to stand in front of Dimity, put her hands on her shoulders, and scrutinized her from an arm’s length. Dimity nodded, with a sudden lump in her throat. “Good girl. Charles has gone for a walk but I am sure when he comes back he will want to start some sketches. We will be back . . . Well. I am not sure when. It depends . . . Anyway, we will see you later on.” She ushered the younger girls towards the door, and they each gave Dimity a smile as they passed—an apologetic one from Delphine, a heartless one from Élodie. In the doorway, Celeste looked back at her. “You cannot wear those woolen clothes here. You will be too hot. When we come back I will find something lighter for you to wear.” She nodded to confirm the promise, and was gone.

Left alone, Dimity hugged her arms tight around herself, and fought against a wave of nerves. Transfixed by uncertainty, she didn’t know whether to stay in her room or leave it. She didn’t know what was right, what the rules were. She tiptoed to the top of the stairs and looked down at the courtyard, where the fountain was splashing gently and the curly-haired boy was sweeping the floor with a stiff-bristled broom. Muted voices echoed up to her, their meanings lost in a blur of fluid, incomprehensible sound. She walked all the way around the terrace onto which their bedroom door opened, staring at the ornate tiles and the carvings on the wooden doors, peering down at the courtyard from every available angle, and up at the sky, which was clear and blue overhead. She had never seen such a fine building, let alone been inside one, or stayed in one. Eventually she plucked up the courage to go downstairs, but when she got to the bottom she saw that the front door was shut. Making sure the coast was clear, she went over to it and tried the handle, tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Suddenly, the servant boy appeared beside her and spoke, his teeth very white in his dark face. Dimity stepped back, her shoulders hitting the door. The boy smiled and spoke again, this time with words that had the more regular, almost familiar sound of the French she sometimes heard Charles and Celeste speak. But even though she could pick out distinct words, she was none the wiser as to their meaning. She edged away from him, then turned and fled back up the stairs.

H
ours later she dozed on her low mattress, gazing up at the ceiling and drifting in and out of a dream in which she was lost in the middle of the vast dry landscape they had crossed the day before, and could feel the wind turning her to sand and blowing her away, one grain at a time. Footsteps outside and a sudden knock roused her, and Charles appeared around the door before she had a chance to answer. He had caught the sun across the bridge of his nose and along his cheekbones, and his hair was sweaty and windswept. Dimity scrambled to her feet, brushing back her hair and fighting to focus her mind. She couldn’t tell if her dizziness was from standing up too fast, or from the devastating sight of him.

“Mitzy! Why are you here alone?”

“They went to Celeste’s family, only I couldn’t go since I’m not family,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Charles frowned. “Well, she shouldn’t have left you here by yourself like that; hardly seems fair. Come on. Are you hungry? I was going to eat, then take a mule up to the Merenid Tombs above the city. Would you like to come with me?”

“Yes,” she said at once, and then began to wonder how she would ride a mule with any modesty while wearing a felt skirt.

She followed Charles, almost trotting to keep up, as he strode down the dusty streets deeper into the heart of Old Fez. She dodged between thronging people, moving like slow-shifting snakes in either direction, all dressed in robes of chalky gray or fawn and brown; desert colors, as though the sand and rock and crumbling plaster all around had seeped into them. Small shops lined the street, their wares more often than not hanging on hooks outside, making the way even narrower. Vast metal plates and jars; bolts of fabric; huge bunches of dried herbs; leather goods of every description; lanterns, baskets, machine parts, and unidentifiable hardware.

“We won’t go too far in. There’s a little place not far from here where we can eat, and a man next door who will loan us some mules for the rest of the day,” Charles called back over his shoulder. A sudden flurry of wings made Dimity look up, and a scattering of bright white pigeons rose up from a rooftop. Also watching them were two tall women on a balcony overhanging the street, their skins as black as pitch, the jewelry hanging from their necks and ears as bright as flames against their dark colors. Dimity goggled at them until she bumped into a woman walking the other way, swathed head to foot and veiled in gray, with her children hanging from her hem. The children wore silk caftans in shades of indigo, lime green, and dusky red, as fine and pretty as butterfly wings. The veiled woman muttered something angrily, and her children giggled and smiled as they passed.

They turned a corner into a steep, cobbled street, and Charles turned his head to speak. “Watch your step, we’re close to the butchers here.” Puzzled, Dimity looked down instead of up, and saw a river of bright red blood running along the middle of the alleyway, bubbling and rippling over the cobblestones. Hurriedly, she stepped to one side of it, and watched as a single white feather traveled by like a tiny boat on a grim and visceral river.

“How many animals could contain that much blood?” she said.

“Many, many. But it’s bloody water, not all blood. The butchers sluice it out of their shops by the bucketful,” Charles told her. He looked at her briefly. “I can’t imagine a hunter like you is squeamish?”

“No, Mr. Aubrey,” she said, shaking her head, even though her knees were aching in an odd, sickly way. She liked him calling her
a hunter
. The smell of the blood was clinging and rich. She took another cautious step back from the flow and her heel caught on something, tripping her. She looked down into the slotted eye of a goat, and recoiled. There were hundreds of eyes, all staring and still. A pile of severed goat heads, trailing red from their necks; straight little teeth behind pulled-back lips. The old man behind this gruesome heap laughed at her, and Dimity hurried away after Charles, her stomach churning.

The place where they had lunch was not a restaurant as such, just a niche in the wall bordered by wooden shutters, where an old woman was stretching flatbreads and cooking them rapidly on an iron plate that smoked with heat. She filled them with handfuls of scrambled eggs and olives, and folded each one deftly before handing them to Charles. They sat on an ancient doorstep opposite the shop to eat, burning their lips on the hot bread and waving away a crowd of fat-bodied flies, metallic and blue, which buzzed around them. Without them even asking, a boy arrived with two glasses of tea, and Charles wiped his fingers on his trousers before taking them and handing the boy a coin in return. He seemed entirely at his ease, entirely used to the way of life that Dimity was finding so alien. She struggled not to show her amazement and to ignore the flat, curious stares she got from the Arab men as they passed. As if also suddenly noticing their attention, Charles gave her a quick smile.

“Don’t wander off on your own, will you, Mitzy? It’s probably quite safe, but it’s so easy to get lost in the old town. I did, on my first visit here. It took me four hours to find my way out! In the end I chose one pack mule and just followed it. Luckily, it led me to one of the gates, and I found my way from there. Best if you stick close to me, I think.”

“I will, I promise,” she said. Charles took another bite and chewed meditatively for a moment.

“There’s a piece coming to me. I can’t quite see it yet, and I think it might be desert, not city . . . we shall see. While you’re here you must see the tanning vats. They’re truly amazing. Not too soon after lunch, though, I think. They have a powerful aroma,” he said with a smile. Dimity nodded. She wanted to do all of it, everything Charles suggested she do.

T
heir mules had raw, pinkish leather saddles which gave off a meaty smell to blend with the reek of the animals themselves. Charles negotiated at length in French with the muleteer, eventually handing over some coins with the air of a man who knows he’s been robbed. Only once they were on and riding away did he wink at Dimity and whisper that he’d gotten them at a bargain. Dimity, who’d had no choice but to ruck her skirt up around her hips in order to sit astride her mule, was sweating under a blanket that had been provided for her to drape around her lower body for modesty’s sake. She tied it behind her waist, wearing it like a giant apron, and the coarse fabric made her knees itch. Within a few hundred yards, the press of the saddle into her seat bones was giving her a numbing pain, but her mule followed Charles’s with quiet obedience, and she would do just the same.

They rode for an hour or more, through the powerful heat of the afternoon, ever upwards onto a rocky hill north of the city. Ahead, Dimity could see the boxy, crenellated remains of buildings that she guessed to be their destination. Sweat trickled down her spine, and she wilted in the saddle, feeling the sun singe her face. Charles was wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and she wished she had something similar. Her hair clung to her scalp and the back of her neck, and she daydreamed about diving off the quay at Tangier and feeling the cool turquoise water close over her head. For a long time the only sound was the clatter of the mules’ hooves over rocks and pebbles on the ground, the creak of the saddles and the moaning of the breeze. Then, near the summit, they began to walk through a field of goat skins, stretched and pegged out to dry beneath the roasting sun. They had been dyed bright red, bright blue, bright green, and lay around on the rocky ground like petals dropped from some vast flower. Dimity stared at each one, astonished by the colors, as her mule picked its way around them.

When at last they arrived at the foot of a tall, tumbledown stone tomb, Charles dismounted and took a long pull from a bottle of water before handing it to Dimity.

“Oh, blast it—you’ve burned your face! Haven’t you got a hat?” he said. Dimity shook her head, which was aching, and did not care about her sunburn, because, as she drank from his bottle, her mouth was touching his. “Never mind, you can wear mine on the way back. Come and sit in the shade for a while.” It was only once Dimity had slithered stiffly from her mule to sit with her back to the crumbling stones that she understood why Charles had undertaken the hot and uncomfortable trek. The whole of Fez was laid out below them, and beyond it the plain and the rocky hills circled all around. The sun was dipping in the west, and everything was alight with an orange glow; the city walls seemed to flame. She gasped at the spectacle of it, and Charles smiled, also turning to look.