The Book of the Seven Delights (14 page)

By the time she had drunk her fill, the canteen she used was half empty and she decided to refill it for Haffe, who was busy unloading supplies and preparing a fire ring for the evening's cooking. She drew a bucket of water and carried it back to him.

"You've been to Marrakech, Haffe. What is it like?" she asked, perching on the side of the low stone wall. When he looked up, she repeated her request. "Marrakech… tell me about Marrakech."

But his gaze, she realized was focused behind her. She turned to see what had caused him to pale. A number of the herdsmen had advanced and stopped a short distance away to watch them and exchange heated comments among themselves. She couldn't help studying them; they were fascinating in their flowing desert robes and black turbans that extended in veils over the lower part of their faces. Curved daggers were displayed prominently in the dark sashes around their waists. Their eyes were more hostile than sociable… or perhaps it was simply their veiled faces that made them look like angry bandits.

Behind them collected a number of smaller figures without veils, some wearing circlets of silver coins across their foreheads, most shading their faces with their hands as they stared her direction and commented furiously about what they saw. A number of children raced back and forth, and pushed each other in her direction, apparently daring one another to approach.

She rose and smoothed her fitted split skirt with her hands, confused by such mixed attention but prepared to greet them cordially.

It all happened at once: the women began to make that strange whirring cry with their tongues, the men let out shouts of what seemed to be outrage and headed for her en masse, and Smith charged out of the main tent with a fierce look on his face. Seeing the men headed for her, he bolted across the oasis to intercept them and took up a position between her and them… his hand on the gun at his side.

Behind Smith, at a more deliberate pace, came a short, stout man in a more elaborate version of the nomads' dress. As he surveyed the situation, he scowled and began shouting orders that brought his men up short. The fury in the camp subsided into a static turbulence that threatened to reerupt at any moment.

Knowing the chieftain's men still gripped the handles of their knives, Smith gave the chieftain a respectful bow that the head man acknowledged with a nod. Then Smith whirled on Abigail with eyes blazing.

"What the hell did you do?" he demanded.

"I have no idea," she said, crossing her arms irritably. "I had just stretched my legs and drawn a pail of water… Haffe and I were talking…"

"You drew water?" he said, looking pained.

"Of course. I intend to pull my weight on this expe—"

"I should have told you—the nomads are very touchy about their water. They don't like foreigners, especially infidel females, polluting their wells."

"Polluting? All I did was draw one wretched bucket of water!" she cried, causing another murmur of alarm to sweep through the clan.

Smith turned to assess the way the assembled herdsmen—including the chieftain—were watching them.

They sensed she was defying him. If he didn't do something, their hostile eyes said, then they would.

Murmurs turned to ugly shouts and a confrontation seemed inevitable, when a woman broke free from a group near the chief's tent and ran forward with something in her hands. She threw it at Smith, but it fell short. It was a minute before he realized it had been thrown to him, not at him, and he retrieved it.

He unfolded and held up a long, indigo dark garment like those worn by the women of the camp.

Bowing in the woman's direction, he came straight to Abigail and draped it over her head and shoulders, covering her from head to toe, as if she were a threadbare couch that had to be made presentable for company.

"What in blazes are you doing?" she demanded. He grabbed her hands to keep her from removing it.

"Saving your hide," he ground out in furiously compressed tones. "It's this or make you a ritual sacrifice to the 'spirit of the watering hole.'"

"Don't be ridiculous." Through her irritation, she realized that there was a marked easing in the turmoil and anxiety the nomads displayed. "Berber nomads don't practice human sacrifice. They're a deeply hospitable people who always welcome strangers."

"How would you know what they are and aren't?"

"Eliza Beaverton listed them as such in her book,
A Three Year Sojourn Through The Barbary Coast

."

He didn't move, didn't blink for what seemed like a very long time.

"That's the most
idiotic
thing I ever—" He removed his hat and ran his hand back through his hair.

"Look, you may have lived your life between the covers of a book until now, but this is the
real
Morocco! Out here, things are messier and uglier and a damn site more complicated. Here, anybody who doesn't come from the same desert clan is fair game for plunder or punishment." He punched a finger into the tip of her nose. "You may not have caught it, sweets, but you just came within a hair's breadth of being thrown down a well!"

That took a moment to register.

She stood there with her nose throbbing and her face aflame, watching him wheel and head for the horses. At first she thought he was going to mount his horse, but instead he began to unsaddle it. She looked to the nomads' camp and found several of the men still watching, though from a greater distance and with a casual air she knew to be anything but casual. Then she looked to the well. Berber nomads were a superstitious lot. Eliza Beaverton had been careful to mention that as well.

She suddenly had difficulty swallowing.

Gripping the cloak around her, she headed for Smith.

"What are you doing?" she said, watching him unbuckle her cinch and draw her saddle from her horse.

"We can't stay here tonight. Not after this."

"We have to."

"I won't sleep a wink," she said, with a slight tremor in her voice.

"None of us will. But if we leave now, we'll have rejected the chieftain's hospitality and be considered fair game for an attack. If we stay, the chief is honor bound to see that we are treated as guests."

It made a convoluted sort of logic; the sort that seemed to be all too common in Morocco. She glanced again toward the nomads' tents, recalling the fury in the men's veiled faces.

"They were really going to throw me down the well?"

He paused in the midst of carrying the saddle closer to the fire and looked down at her. Cords were visible in his neck and his upper arms bulged beneath his sleeves. Her gaze lowered to those reassuringly solid muscles.

"Only if they got past me," he said, looking like he meant every word.

She watched him deposit the saddle and return for the final one. Did he really mean it when he said he wouldn't let anything happen to her? He would have fought them for her? Something in her chest began to quiver.

In the space of a few erratic heartbeats her entire universe ground to a halt and when it resumed spinning it was going in the opposite direction. His overwhelming strength and male stubbornness went from primitive-and-debasing to protective-and-reassuring so quickly she was left dizzy.

She wobbled over to the campfire Haffe had started, picked up several of those smelly brown disks, and began to feed them to the flames.

There was still an air of unreality about her perceptions later that night as they wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down to sleep… so much so that she couldn't tell if she was awake or asleep when she felt someone lift her head and tuck a rolled blanket beneath it. When she looked up and saw that it was Smith and that he was lying down beside her, she couldn't resist a sigh of relief.

The nomads had decamped the next morning when the sun woke Abigail. It was a good two hours past sunrise and one side of her face was already hot where the sun had found it. She staggered to her feet and found Smith and Haffe lolling in the shade, waiting for her rise.

"Why didn't you wake me?" she asked, her heart beating frantically to catch up with her movements.

"You needed the sleep. We all did, after they left." "What happened to them?" She nodded to the vacant spots where tents had been. "Where did they go?"

"East. Probably to another watering hole. One that's not contaminated." Smith flicked a taunting glance at her and she threw off her protective shroud and planted her hands at her waist.

"That's not my fault. I will not be held responsible for every ridiculous superstition the sun burns into these peoples' heads."

"If I didn't know better I'd swear you were British." He gave a short, ironic laugh. "Look, Boston…

you're in their land, eating their food, breathing their air, and treading on their ancestral soil. You have to play by their rules."

He strode past her to the horses waiting in the shade. They had already been saddled and loaded for travel. But instead of climbing aboard, he began searching his saddlebag for something.

She turned away, annoyed, and visited the tall grasses on the far side of a cluster of palms. She was busy brushing her rumpled clothes and running her fingers through her disheveled hair as she returned, when he stepped into her path with something in his hands. Her gun.

"Not a bad piece of iron," he said, breaking it open. "Haven't seen this particular model before. A Webley top-break .455…"

"Mark Two," she added. "The proprietor said it was the latest model… easier to load… an improved barrel…"

"A little large for a woman. Bet it packs a whale of a kick."

"It does." She noted the ease with which he handled the gun and hoped he hadn't decided just to dispose of her down the well himself.

"He should have sold you something smaller."

"He tried. I was advised to get something with 'stopping power.'"

"Yeah? By whom?"

"Maude Cummings, if you must know. In
A Female Adventurer Abroad
, she said you never know when you might have to stop a water buffalo or stampeding herd of zebra."

He closed his eyes, looking pained, then opened them and focused on checking the cylinders. Evaluating the balance and handling, he aimed it to the side and sighted down the barrel. Then he twirled it on his trigger finger, caught it by the grip, and offered it stock-first to her.

"Keep it with you at all times." He shoved into her hands. "And it wouldn't hurt for you to keep some extra bullets on you."

The fact that he was returning her gun to her seemed an ominous sign.

"Why?" The gun was heavier than she recalled; she had to hold it with both hands. "What's going to happen?" It couldn't be good.

He draped her cloak over her shoulder and nudged her toward the horses.

"We'll be covering a lot more ground before we reach Marrakech."

"And?" Dread crept up her spine. She might need to shoot at someone?

"And everyone you meet on the road in Morocco is either your new best friend or your new worst enemy."

"It sounds to me like you're betting on "enemy." "

"Experience"—he headed for his horse—"is a hell of a teacher."

So it was. She stood for a moment, considering the lesson this experience had taught her: He knew more about the land and people than it had seemed at first. More importantly, he had proven that he was willing to side with her and even stand between her and danger.

"All right." She took a stand beside her horse as the others mounted. "I've decided. I'll hire you. For
half
of whatever treasure we find. The rest goes to the British Museum. No wheedling or whining or last-minute demands."

Smith thought on it for a moment, then jerked a nod and grinned at Haffe.

"Congratulations, my friend. You'll soon be a married man."

From a distance, the city of Marrakech looked like a grand, idealized painting intended for the main salon of a London men's club. The massive walls glowed the color of deep roseate ochre in the waning rays of the sun, and the great prayer tower at the center of the city shone like beaten gold. The road that wound through the palm-littered countryside toward the great northern gate was filled with caravans and people in colorful desert robes and turbans. It was the very essence of Morocco… the vision embodied in every book, painting, and illustration she had consulted.

Five days of fatigue and anxiousness gave way to excitement as they joined the camels, donkey carts, and pilgrims afoot on the main road. This was the exotic stepping off point to adventure that the professor had described in his journals. .She was finally on the threshold of discovery.

But the relief she experienced was only partly for their safe arrival. The rest had to do with her unacknowledged fear that T. Thaddeus might have let his hopes for his lifelong quest affect his interpretations… that he might have imagined more than was really here. But now, seeing the city real and alive all around her, she felt a fresh flood of certainty that they would find the library.

Anything—everything seemed possible in a place like this.

"Boston!" Smith's voice finally broke through her preoccupation. He reined his horse and waited for her to catch up. "Put on that cloak from the other night. No sense drawing unwanted attention."

She reached for the dark cotton cloak tucked between the bags behind her and dragged it on over her head and shoulders. Ahead of her, Smith was removing his hat and donning a long, hooded tunic that was Morocco's traditional outer garment. Then he slumped somewhat in his saddle, making himself less conspicuous, and she instinctively copied him.

Looking around at the colorful turbans, veils, and exotic robes of the people milling about the gate, she recalled the reaction of the nomads to her simple curiosity and redirected her gaze to the walls and gate itself… looking for rifle barrels… troops of angry soldiers… blades clamped between teeth…

As they passed under the ornate arch of the Bab el-Khemis and into the shade cast by the great walls, she felt the temperature drop and experienced a chill. Beneath her cloak, her hand went to the gun wedged in her belt, against her back. The steel was no longer cold; it had absorbed heat from her body and now felt strangely in place there, at her back.