The Fire (15 page)

That is, until just this morning. Now everything was changed and different.

It was God’s irony, as the Mulay himself should understand better than anyone. Here he had been prepared to die in peace, melded into the bosom of Allah just as he longed for. But God had a different idea.

Why should it be a surprise? The Mulay had been a Sufi long enough to know that when it came to Allah’s ways, the unexpected must always be expected.

And what the Mulay was expecting right now was a message.

He lay beneath the thin coverlet on the slab of stone that had always served as his bed, his hands folded over his breast as he waited. Beside this plinth sat a large skin drum with a single drumstick attached to the side. He’d asked to have it brought here to him in the event he needed it suddenly, as he was quite sure he would.

Flat on his back, he gazed up at the ceiling toward the sole window, the skylight of his isolated hermitage – the
Zawiya,
the ‘cell’ or ‘corner’ – this tiny, whitewashed stone building high atop the mountain that had served for so long as his remote dwelling place. It would serve as his tomb, he thought wryly, once he himself had been turned into a holy relic.

Outside, his followers were already waiting. Hundreds of the faithful knelt upon the snowy ground in silent prayer. Well, let them wait. It’s God who makes the schedules here, not me. Why would God keep an old man lingering like this unless it was important?

And why else would He have brought them here to the mountain? First, the Bektashi initiate, Kauri, who’d found shelter here ever since his escape from the slavers. The boy
had insisted all these months that he was one of the protectors of the greatest of secrets, along with a girl who was still missing. According to the boy, she had been captured by the sultan Mulay Suliman’s forces, which made it difficult if not impossible to find her. The daughter of Ali Pasha Tebeleni, she’d been entrusted with this relic by the great Bektashi
Pir
himself, the Baba Shemimi, nearly one year ago – a relic that the Mulay had always imagined might be no more than a myth.

But as of this morning, lying here on what would soon be his deathbed, the Mulay ad-Darqawi had understood at last that all of the story must indeed be true.

For now, Sultan Suliman was dead. His retinue would soon be scattered like leaves on the wind. The girl must be found before it was too late.

And what had become of the valuable relic that had been entrusted to her?

The shaikh ad-Darqawi knew it was Allah’s will that he, and he alone, answer these questions; that he gather his strength from within to accomplish this final task demanded of him. He must not fail.

But to succeed, he first needed the sign.

Through the open hole in the ceiling the Mulay could glimpse the clouds moving across the sky. They looked like handwriting.
The Mystic Pen of God,
he thought. ‘The Pen’ had long been among the Mulay’s favorite suras from the Holy Qur’an, one that helped explain how the Prophet was chosen to write it. For as all things are known to Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, it had been known to Him that Muhammad –
may peace be upon him
– could neither read nor write.

Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, it was the illiterate Muhammad whom God had chosen as messenger of His revelations. Among His earliest commands to the Prophet
were
‘Read!’
and
‘Write!’
God always tests us, the Mulay thought, by insisting upon something that may at first appear to us, ourselves, to be quite impossible.

It was many decades ago, when Mulay ad-Darqawi was himself a young disciple on the Sufi Path, that he had first gained the skill to separate truth from vanity, wheat from chaff. That he’d learned how one might sow in pain and penury here on earth, in order to reap that otherworldly harvest of joy and riches. And after many years of honing this patience and intuition, at last he had discovered the secret.

Some called it a paradox – like a veil, an illusion that we created for ourselves: something of great value that we couldn’t see, though it lay right before our eyes. The followers of ’Isa of Nazareth called it ‘the Stone that the Builders Rejected.’ The alchemists spoke of it as the
Prima Materia
– the Primal Matter, the Source.

Each master who’d found the Way had said the same: a discovery of great simplicity, and, like many simple things, breathtaking in its magnitude. Yet it was also wrapped in mystery, for did not the Prophet say,
‘Inna lillahi la-sab’ina alfa hijabin min nurin wa zulmatin?’
God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness?

The Veil! Yes, that’s what those scudding clouds resembled – those clouds just over his head! He squinted his eyes, the better to study the clouds. But at that moment, just as the wispy clouds above were moving beyond the Mulay’s window of vision, they parted. And there in the sky he thought he saw a large equilateral triangle comprised of clouds, feathery, like an enormous pyramidal tree with many branches.

In a flash of insight, the Mulay ad-Darqawi saw the meaning. Behind the Veil lay the Tree of Illumination.

Behind
this
veil, as the Mulay now understood, lay the
illumination of the
Tariq’at,
the Secret Way that was hidden in the chess set created by al-Jabir ibn Hayyan more than one thousand years ago, and that piece now sought by his fellow Sufis – the piece the Baba Shemimi had protected.

The boy himself, though he’d held it in his hands, had never seen it, for it was veiled by a dark material. In confidence, he revealed to the shaikh Darqawi that he’d been told it was a most important piece that might be the key to all: the Black Queen.

Thanks to his vision, the Mulay now believed he knew precisely where this piece must have been hidden by the sultan Suliman or his forces. Just like the
Prima Materia,
like the secret Stone, it would be hidden in plain view, but it would be veiled. If he died now, before sharing this vision, the thousand-year-old secret might die with him.

The old man marshaled what power he could to put aside his coverlet, arise from his plinth, and stand without aid on bare feet upon the cold stone floor. With frail and trembling hands he grasped the drumstick as firmly as he could and took a deep breath. He needed all his strength to beat the familiar tattoo of the Shadhili Sufis.

The Mulay commended his soul into the hands of Allah.

And he began to beat the drum.

Kauri heard a sound that he had not heard since he’d left the White Land: the sound of the Sufi tattoo! This could only mean that something of great importance was happening. The crowds of mourners heard it, too; one by one, they looked up from their kneeling prayers.

As Kauri knelt in the snow alongside these hundreds of others who had drawn together here awaiting the shaikh Darqawi’s death, he strained to make out the weak sound of the drum, trying to divine the meaning of its message. But he was frustrated, for it was unlike any other cadence he’d
ever heard. Just as each drum had a voice of its own, he knew that each rhythm held a different import, one that could be completely grasped only by the ear initiated into its specific significance.

But more shocking than the sound of this incomprehensible drumbeat was the location from which it derived: the
Zawiya,
the stone cell of shaikh Darqawi where the saint lay dying. The crowds murmured in amazement. It could only be Darqawi himself who beat the tattoo. Kauri prayed that this also meant there existed hope of some kind.

For ten months, ever since his escape from those slave merchants who’d clapped him in chains at dockside, Kauri had sought in vain to learn the fate of Haidée and the chess piece called the Black Queen. No effort on his part, nor on that of the Shadhili Sufis, even of the shaikh himself, had turned up a trace of either. It was as if the girl and that critical key to al-Jabir’s sacred legacy had both been swallowed by the earth.

As Kauri listened, it seemed the drumbeats from within became steadily firmer and stronger. Then he noticed a stirring at the fringe of the crowd outside. One by one, men were rising to their feet to clear a path for something moving in their direction. Though Kauri could not yet make out just what it was, there was whispering.

‘Two horsemen,’ said his neighbor in a choked voice that mingled awe and fear. ‘They say perhaps they are angels. The saint is drumming the sacred beat of the
Pen
!’

Kauri looked at the man in amazement, but the man was looking past him. Kauri glanced back over his own shoulder to where the crowd was parting for whatever came their way.

A tall man astride a pale horse moved through the crowd, with another man behind him. When Kauri caught a glimpse of the white desert robes, the coppery hair swinging loose about his shoulders, it recalled those forbidden icons of ‘Esus
the Nasrani’ that the priests had kept in their fortress monastery of St Pantaleon, on the Isle of Pines, the place where the Black Queen had been hidden.

But the horseman who followed was more of a revelation. He wore the indigo
litham
!

Kauri sprang to his feet and rushed forward along with the others.

It was his father, Shahin!

The al-Qarawiyyan Mosque

Fez, Morocco

The glow of sunset was gone from the skies; darkness had set in. The lacquered tile roofs of the al-Qarawiyyan Mosque glittered in the torchlight of the courtyard. The keyhole arches around the court’s periphery were already deep in shadow as Charlot, alone, crossed the vast open expanse of the black-and-white-tiled floor, en route to
Isha,
the last evening prayer.

He’d arrived as late as possible, but still with enough time to enter the mosque with the last group of worshippers for the day. By now Shahin and Kauri, already within, would have secured their hiding place as planned. Shahin had deemed it best for Charlot to arrive separately, after nightfall. For though his red hair was now completely concealed beneath a turban and his heavy djellaba, by day the cornflower blue of his eyes would be conspicuous.

When Charlot reached the fountain court the last stragglers were performing their ablutions before entering the sanctum. Beside them at the basin he quickly removed his shoes, careful to keep his eyes always downcast. When he’d finished washing his hands, face, and feet, he surreptitiously tucked his shoes into the pouch beneath his robe so they wouldn’t be found here once everyone had departed the mosque for the night.

Lagging until the others had entered, he pushed open
the great carved doors of the mosque and stepped into the dim, hushed interior – a forest of white pillars stretching in all directions, hundreds of them as far as the eye could see. Between these, worshippers already lay prostrate on their prayer rugs, facing east.

Charlot paused near the door to gauge the terrain from the drawing of the mosque the shaikh had provided them.

Despite the warmth of Charlot’s garments and the warm dull glow provided by oil lamps throughout the great hall, he could not help but feel a terrible chill. He trembled, for what he was doing was not only highly dangerous; it was forbidden.

The al-Qarawiyyan was one of the oldest and most sacred of mosques, founded nearly a thousand years ago by Fatima, a wealthy woman from its namesake city, Kairuan in Tunisia – the fourth sacred city of Islam after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.

So sacred was al-Qarawiyyan that mere entry by a
giaour,
an infidel like himself, might be punishable by death. Though he’d been raised by Shahin and knew much of Shahin’s faith, one could scarcely overlook that Charlot’s mother had been a novitiate nun and his natural father a bishop of the Catholic Church in France.

Indeed, in every regard, to spend the night here within this sacred precinct, as the shaikh had recommended, was completely unthinkable. They would be trapped here like birds in a sack, with no recourse to their natural element.

But the shaikh ad-Darqawi had assured them – in a lofty tone suggesting he was already well conversant in the tongues of angels – that he had it on highest authority that the chess piece would be found within the great mosque of al-Qarawiyyan and that he knew where it was hidden:

‘Behind the veil, within a tree. Follow the parable in “The Verse of Light,” and you will surely find it.’

God doth guide whom He will to His Light:

God doth set forth parables for men:

and God doth know all things.

– Qur’an, Sura xxiv: 35,
‘The Verse of Light’

‘“The Verse of Light” is part of a famous sura in the Qur’an,’ Kauri explained to Charlot in a whisper.

They were hiding behind a heavy tapestry in the funereal annex of the mosque, where the two had been seated on the floor, concealed with Shahin these many hours, ever since the
Isha
prayer ended and the mosque was locked up for the night.

According to the shaikh ad-Darqawi, the only occupant of the vast mosque from now until dawn would be the
Muwaqqit,
the Keeper of Time. But he remained all night in his private chamber high in the minaret, relying upon sophisticated instruments – an astrolabe and a pendulum clock, gifts to the famous mosque from Louis XIV of France – to make his important calculation: the precise moment for
Fajr,
the next of the five canonical prayers prescribed by the Prophet, which took place between first light and sunrise. They should be safe in this alcove until then, when the gates were unlocked. Then they could mingle with the morning worshippers and depart.

Kauri went on speaking in a whisper, though there was no one nearby to hear. ‘“The Verse of Light” begins by affirming that it’s meant to be taken as a parable – a kind of encrypted code concerning “God’s Light.” It gives five keys: a niche, a lamp, a glass, a tree, and some oil. According to my teacher, the Baba Shemimi, these are the five secret steps to illumination if we can decipher the meaning, although scholars have debated its meaning for hundreds of years without any real resolution. I’m not sure how Shaikh Darqawi thought this would lead here to the mosque or help us find the Black Queen—’