The Fire (16 page)

Kauri stopped when he noticed Charlot’s sudden change of expression, as if the latter had been overcome by some unbidden emotion. His face had gone white; he seemed to have trouble breathing in the cloistered space. Without warning, he’d precipitously jumped to his feet and pushed aside the heavy curtain. Kauri glanced quickly to his father for guidance, but Shahin was on his feet as well and had grasped Charlot by the arm. He seemed quite as upset as Charlot.

‘What is it?’ Kauri said, stepping out to draw the men back behind the tapestry before they were found.

Charlot shook his head, his blue eyes clouded over as he gazed at Shahin.

‘My
destiny,
you said, did you not?’ he asked Shahin with a bitter little smile. ‘Perhaps it was never anything about
Kauri
that blocked my vision. My God. How can this be? Yet I still cannot see it.’

‘Father, what is it?’ Kauri repeated, still in a whisper.

Shahin told his son, ‘What you’ve just told us must be impossible. A total paradox. For the piece we’ve come here to find in the mosque tonight – the chess piece that you brought out of Albania eleven months ago –
cannot
be the Black Queen of al-Jabir ibn Hayyan. For
we
possess the Black Queen. It once belonged to Catherine the Great. It was retrieved from her grandson Alexander more than fifteen years ago – secured for us by Charlot’s own father, Prince Talleyrand. How could Ali Pasha also have possessed it?’

‘But,’ said Kauri, ‘the Baba Shemimi claimed that the Albanian Bektashis and Ali Pasha have possessed this piece for more than thirty years! Haidée was chosen by the Baba because her natural father, Lord Byron, had a hand in its history. We were to take it to him for protection.’

Charlot said to Kauri, ‘We must find this girl at once.
Her role may be critical to everything ahead. But first, is there any way that you can decipher that parable?’

‘I believe I may have done so already,’ said Kauri. ‘We must begin at the place of prayer.’

It was nearly midnight – once they felt sure that the
Muwaqqit
was well asleep – when Shahin, Charlot, and Kauri crept down the steps from their alcove in the loft of the Funereal Mosque.

The Great Mosque was deserted. The expanse beneath its five vaulted domes was hushed as an open sea beneath a starlit sky.

Kauri had said that the only spot in the mosque that ‘wore a veil,’ as the shaikh had stressed, was the alcove where the prayer niche was located – the niche itself being the first step in the parable of ‘The Verse of Light.’

Within this same niche lay the
lamp
that was always kept burning, which in turn was contained in the
glass
surrounding it ‘like a brilliant star, lit from a Blessed
tree.
’ The tree in the ‘Verse’ was an olive tree, which produced a luminous light from ever-burning
oil
– a magic oil, in this case, for ‘fire scarcely touched it.’

The three men silently slipped by the marble pillars and headed to the prayer niche at the far end of the mosque. Once they’d reached it and passed through the curtain, they stood together before the niche and gazed into the lamp within its sparkling glass container.

At last, it was Charlot who spoke. ‘You said that the next step in the Qur’anic verse would be a tree, but I see nothing like that here.’

‘We must pull aside the veil,’ said Shahin, pointing to the screening curtain they’d just passed through. ‘The tree must be on the other side, inside the mosque.’

When they pulled back the drapery to reenter the mosque,
they saw what they had not recognized before as the final key: There before them, suspended by its heavy golden chain from the central dome of the great al-Qarawiyyan Mosque, was the enormous chandelier, glittering with light from the thousands of oil lamps, many with luminous cutout stars and suns. From this vantage point, seeing it hanging there from the central dome, it resembled an ancient drawing of the World Tree.

‘The tree and the oil both here together – the sign,’ said Shahin. ‘Not the illumination that the Baba Shemimi seeks for my son, perhaps. But at least we may be enlightened enough to discover whether there is another Black Queen up there.’

They were fortunate that the gearing mechanism for the chandelier had been well oiled; they moved it in silence. Still it took extraordinary effort by all three to lower it by the chain – only to discover that the lowest it would reach was just enough to enable the stewards of the mosque to replenish or relight the lamps with long-handled tapers or spouts. When all was done, it hovered ten feet off the ground.

As the sun moved toward its inevitable rise, the three were in serious panic at their plight. How to get up there into the ‘tree’? At last, a decision was reached.

Kauri, as the lightest in weight of the three, removed his outer garments, stripped down to his shiftlike kaftan, and, with Charlot’s help, was hoisted onto his father’s shoulders. The boy climbed onto the heavy branches of the chandelier, taking care not to disturb the many flickering bowls of luminous oil.

Shahin and Charlot watched from beneath as – soundlessly and with great dexterity – Kauri ascended the tree, branch by branch. Whenever he shifted his position too far, the enormous chandelier swayed slightly, threatening to spill some oil. Charlot found himself holding his breath. It took a conscious effort to calm his racing pulse.

Kauri reached the top tier of the lowered chandelier – perhaps sixty feet in the air, more than halfway to the dome. He looked down to where Charlot and Shahin waited so far below. Then he shook his head to indicate that there was no Black Queen.

But it has to be here!
thought Charlot in a frenzy of anguish and doubt.
How could it not be here?
They’d all been through so much. Their journey across the great desert and the mountains. Kauri’s capture and narrow escape from bondage; the plight of the girl, wherever she might be. And then this paradox.

Was Mulay ad-Darqawi’s vision as poor as his own had become? Had there been some mistake; had the shaikh misinterpreted the message?

And then he saw it.

Gazing at the gigantic chandelier from beneath, Charlot thought he saw something that wasn’t quite aligned. He moved to the exact center of the structure and looked up again. There at the core he saw a dark shadow.

Charlot raised his hand and motioned to Kauri, high above. The boy began his precarious descent – more difficult by far than the trip upward – lowering himself, step by step, and skirting the thousands of dishes of burning oil.

Shahin stood beside Charlot beneath the tree and watched the descent. When Kauri had reached the lowest tier of the chandelier, he swung two-handed from the bottom rung and Shahin wrapped his arms around the boy’s legs to catch him. Except for a quick intake of breath by Shahin, all had been accomplished in complete silence.

All three sat on the ground and looked up at the hollow core of the chandelier, where the lump of coal had been inserted. They had to get it out – and as quickly as possible, so they could raise the chandelier again well before the muezzin’s call to morning prayer.

Charlot made a sign to Shahin, who stood with legs planted widely apart and held his hands like a stirrup for Charlot to step onto. Charlot climbed to Shahin’s shoulders and stood precariously, extending his arm and reaching into the chandelier’s core. His fingers brushed the piece but he couldn’t quite grasp it. He motioned for Kauri and extended his hand. Kauri clambered up the two men’s bodies and swung himself up to the first rung once more, until he was above the chess piece. Reaching inside the chandelier’s core, he pressed down on the piece of coal. It was dislodged and moved downward, sliding through the core toward Charlot’s extended hand.

At that same moment, a loud chiming like that of a gong shattered the silence in the vast hall. It seemed to come from somewhere high up, toward the entrance. Charlot flinched, momentarily withdrawing his raised hand to correct his balance – when everything suddenly went topsy-turvy. Kauri had snatched at the coal from above, trying to halt its downward progress, but had failed. Shahin staggered under the unbalanced weight, and Charlot toppled from his shoulders to the ground, rolling to one side just as the weighty chunk of coal crashed like a meteor, from ten feet above, onto the carpeted marble floor between them.

Charlot leapt to his feet and snatched up the piece in a panic as the loud chiming continued echoing off marble pillars, magnified on high from the hollowed domes. Kauri swung from the bottom rung of the swaying chandelier and dropped to the floor amid a shower of hot oil. Together the three braced for flight –

And then it stopped.

The chamber was again swallowed in silence.

Charlot glanced back at his two astonished companions. Then he understood, and he laughed despite the danger that still hung in the air around them.

‘Twelve chimes, wasn’t it?’ he said in a whisper. ‘That would
be midnight. I’d forgotten about the
Muwaqqit
and his ruddy French pendulum clock!’

After the predawn prayer Charlot and his companions, mingling among the other worshippers, moved through the gates of the courtyard into the streets of Fez.

The day was already beginning. The sun shimmered like a filigreed platter through the silvery veil of fog that was just melting away. To reach the nearest gate of the walled city they must pass through the medina, already bustling with merchants of legumes and viands, the air thick with the exotic aromas of rosewater and almonds, sandalwood and saffron and amber. The largest and most complex market district in Morocco, the Fez medina was a confusing labyrinth where, they all knew, it was easy to become hopelessly lost.

But Charlot would not begin to feel secure with this chess piece hidden within the pouch beneath his garments until he could set foot outside of the city’s imprisoning walls, which loomed around them everywhere, like those of a medieval fortress. He had to get out – if only long enough to draw his breath.

Furthermore, he knew they must find a suitable place to hide the chess piece in the short term, at least until they could trace the path of the girl who might hold the key to the mystery.

Within the medina, not far from the mosque, lay the famous five-hundred-year-old Attarine Medrassa, one of the most beautiful religious centers in the world with its carved cedar doors and grilles, its walls replete with richly colored tilework and golden calligraphy. The Mulay Darqawi had informed them that the medrassa roof, which was open to the public, provided a bird’s-eye view of the entire medina. It would allow them to map out their exit route.

And more important, Charlot was drawn to this spot.
Something was awaiting him there – though he couldn’t see what it was.

Once on the parapet with his companions, Charlot looked out over the medina, trying to get his bearings. Below lay the maze of narrow streets dotted with shops and souks, fawn-colored houses with small gardens, fountains, and trees.

But immediately beneath them – right here in the al-Attarine souk just below the medrassa’s walls – Charlot beheld a remarkable sight.
The
sight. The vision he’d been awaiting. The vision that blocked all the others.

When he realized what it was, his blood froze.

It was a slave market.

He had never seen one in his life, yet how could he be mistaken? There below him were hundreds of women held in enormous fenced-in pens like animals in a barnyard, chained to one another by ankle bracelets. They stood without moving, with bowed heads, all looking at the ground as if ashamed to see the platform toward which they were headed: the platform where the merchants displayed their wares.

But there was one who looked up. She looked directly at him, as it seemed, with those silvery eyes, as if expecting to find him there.

She was only a wisp of a girl, but her beauty was breathtaking. And there was something more. For Charlot now understood exactly
why
he had lost his memory. He knew that even if it cost his life, even if it cost the Game itself, he must save her, he must rescue her from that pit of iniquity. At last he understood everything. He knew who she was and what he must do.

Kauri had grasped Charlot by the arm with urgency.

‘My God! It is
she
!’ he told Charlot, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘It’s Haidée!’

‘I know,’ Charlot said.

‘We must save her!’ Kauri said, clinging to Charlot’s arm.

‘I know,’ Charlot repeated.

But as he stared down into her eyes, unable to avert his gaze, Charlot knew something else that he could not speak of to anyone until he could understand, himself, just what it all might mean.

He knew that it was Haidée herself who had blocked his vision.

After their brief consultation with Shahin on the parapet, they had arranged their plan, the simplest they could devise on such short notice, though even so it would be fraught with difficulty and danger.

They knew there was no way they could effect an abduction or escape for the girl from so large a crowd. Shahin, they agreed, would depart at once to retrieve their horses for their departure, while Charlot and Kauri, posing as a wealthy French colonial slave trader and his servant, would purchase Haidée at whatever the cost and meet him at the medina’s western edge, an isolated area not far from the northwest gate, a place where their exit from the city might be less remarked upon.

As Charlot and Kauri descended into the crowd of purchasers awaiting the first block of humans being prepared for auction, Charlot felt a tension and rising fear that he could barely contain. Slipping among the dense crowd of men, his vision of the pens was blocked for a time. But he did not need to see the faces of those who were held there like livestock awaiting slaughter. He could already smell their fear.

His own fear was scarcely less affecting. They’d begun by auctioning the children. As each lot of young ones was herded from the pens and up onto the auction stand, fifty souls to a parcel, where they could be seen, their clothes were stripped, their hair, ears, eyes, noses, and teeth were examined by the
auctioneers, and a starting price for each was put upon their heads. The smaller children were sold in lots of ten or twenty, and the ‘sucklings’ were sold with their mothers – to be sold once again, no doubt, the moment they’d been weaned.