CHAPTER 5
Rahab is dreaming. In his dreams he is walking across a wide, empty sea-strand at low tide. The sand feels deliciously warm beneath his bare toes, sun-parched, soft … until his foot stubs against a sharp object.
‘Ouch. Ouch!’
He stumbles, cursing, as he tries to nurse his throbbing foot, sinking down into the sand to take a closer look.
A drop of blood oozes from the cut as he brushes away the clinging sand particles. What has he cut his foot on: broken glass, a jagged rock hidden in the sand? He sifts through the sand and uncovers …
A shell.
A twirling curlicue of a shell, as long as his middle finger, pink and cream and brown.
Far away the tideline shimmers, a slick of silver on the distant horizon. Only a high spring tide could have deposited such a treasure so far ashore.
A faint tremor begins within his hand. Maybe some sea creature is trapped inside –
He raises the shell to take a closer look.
The vibration becomes a sound. A humming buzz.
Tentatively he shakes it, holds it to his ear.
And hears
The distant murmur of voices, many voices, rising like a distant stormwind …
A fine smoke slowly begins to emanate from the shell, curling out, unravelling in whorls.
He cries out and hurls the shell away from him, as far as his strength will carry it.
The smoke continues to unravel, filling the sky with cloud until the sun-warmed beach is dark with the shadow of imminent storm.
*
Rahab woke with a start. He was sitting bolt upright, staring blindly into nothingness. His eyes felt grittily sore, as if he’d been up half the night sewing.
The shell. The shell?
His hands fumbled beneath his bolster where he had hidden Jehiel’s prayer-case and brought it out into the dawn light.
Its sharp corners must have protruded through the thin stuffing of the bolster and penetrated his dreams. It was that – or he had eaten too many of Chadassah’s cream cheese pancakes for supper. Didn’t they say that cheese gave you bad dreams?
He wasn’t taking any chances.
He rolled off on to the floor and lifted his mattress, stuffing the prayer-case beneath.
‘One disturbed night I can cope with. Two – and I start sewing sleeves together.’
‘Make the rabbits again, Rahab,’ begged Iudith.
‘Yes, make the rabbits!’ lisped Thirzah.
Rahab glanced around; Schimeon was in the workroom cutting out velvet – a tricky operation which always made him bad-tempered – Michal had been sent to the market to buy aubergines and Chadassah was busy in the kitchen. If anyone complained, he would protest he was merely amusing the little girls to keep them out of their parents’ way.
With a solemn face he delved first one hand and then the other into his bag of threads. He kept two pockets of discarded felt inside, one brown, one red; in a rare moment of idleness he had embroidered eyes, nose and whiskers with ends of leftover thread. The girls had been enchanted with them, naming them rabbits for reasons he could not quite understand …
He popped one gloved hand out of the bag – and then the other, making little whiffling noises. Almost instantly Thirzah began to giggle.
‘Hé, you, sieur! Yes, you, sieur! You stole my carrot!’
‘I never touched your carrot –’
Iudith’s lips began to twitch. As Rahab made his rabbits bump into each other, the girls subsided into helpless laughter.
‘Oh, stop, stop –’ begged Iudith, holding her sides. ‘I’m – aching –’
‘No, don’t stop!’ Thirzah cried. ‘More!’
‘Stay out of my burrow or I’ll –’
‘Papa, Papa!’
Michal’s voice, shrill and breathless, made Rahab break off in mid-stream. Forgetting the puppets were still on his hands, he hurried to the door, followed by Iudith and Thirzah.
Michal’s face was flushed, her headscarf had come undone and her hair was loose about her shoulders.
‘What’s wrong?’ Schimeon appeared at the door of the workroom, shears in hand. ‘Why is your head uncovered, girl?’
‘Jehiel – arrested.’ Michal could hardly speak; she clutched at her side as if she had a stitch from running.
‘Arrested?’ Schimeon repeated. ‘But – why?’ His eyes met Rahab’s over Michal’s dishevelled head; Rahab stared back, aghast.
Thirzah tugged at Rahab’s jacket.
‘More rabbits, Rahab,’ she pleaded.
Rahab rested one gloved hand on her shoulder, hoping to distract her for long enough to hear Michal’s news.
‘Comte Aymon – ordered it.’
‘In connection with the boy’s death?’
Michal nodded.
‘Where have they taken him?’ Rahab asked.
‘To – the Tour d’Orbiel.’
‘What?’ Schimeon bellowed. ‘Why not to the Tour de la Justice?’
Rahab felt Iudith shrink against him, frightened by her father’s outburst. He looked down; she was sucking her thumb, a baby habit she reverted to when tired or miserable.
‘Captain Orbiel is to interrogate him.’
‘Oh, so now Captain Orbiel has become the city inquisitor?’
‘They say the Comte has authorised him to arrest and question anyone he wants until he finds the murderer.’
‘I must go tell the Elders,’ Schimeon said. ‘Rahab – keep shop till I’m back.’ He went out at once, still brandishing his shears, his measuring string dangling around his neck.
‘Be careful, Schimeon!’ cried Chadassah as the door slammed behind him.
The others stood in silence, staring at each other. Then Thirzah began to grizzle.
‘More rabbits …’
‘Rahab’s got to keep shop now,’ Rahab said.
‘Yes, Rahab’s busy.’ Chadassah took each little girl by the hand and bustled them into the kitchen, Thirzah’s long, thin wail of protest trailing behind her like a streamer.
‘And you’re going to serve customers like that?’ Michal said with a glint of her customary teasing.
Rahab hastily pulled off the glove-puppets and, red-faced, threw them back into his thread-bag.
Up in the attic, Rahab took Rebh Jehiel’s prayer-case from beneath his mattress.
What should he do?
‘If anything should happen to me …’
He had understood Jehiel’s concerns; without children to succeed him, it was only natural that he wanted to bequeath his family prayer-case to his fellow scholars. It was a way of ensuring continuance – of a kind.
But he had never for one moment imagined that anything like this would happen.
Had Jehiel foreseen his arrest?
The facts of the matter did not add up. Jehiel a child-murderer? The very thought seemed ridiculous. Besides, even if the elderly scholar had killed the little boy, it was hardly likely that he would have had the strength to drag the lifeless body to Schimeon’s doorstep and then run away. And whoever had dumped the body on the doorstep had run away – fast.
‘Don’t let it fall into Gentile hands.’
Rahab frowned down at the shell of ivory. It was plain and yellowed with age; not as ornately carved as the prayer-cases that hung outside the Tsiyonim houses in Arcassanne. Only a single character had been etched on the ivory and that was so worn that Rahab could not make out whether it was a letter of the ancient alphabet or some other arcane character.
What would any Gentile want with such an old, chipped relic?
Rahab began to wrap the case in an offcut of fine wool he had saved from the workroom; as he turned it, he heard something rattle inside. He shook the shell. Whatever it was, it did not sound like a scrap of parchment.
Curiosity overcame him; he reached for a pair of embroidery scissors and levered with the fine blades. The shell had been sealed with a hard, yellow wax which chipped away in fragments.
He worked on until he was able to slip the scissor blade into the crack, prise it open and tip the contents into his palm.
The enamelled metal of the half-disc glinted in the evening light: gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, malachite and amethyst.
‘Ahhh …’ Rahab whispered into the dusk. ‘An amulet …’ He brought it closer, trying to make out what the pattern was. Were those pinions, wing feathers, etched into the jewelled enamel?
His hands began to shake as he realised what he had found. His father had told him of just such a sacred talisman; he had read to him from the Book of the Covenant. Every Tsiyonim child learned that passage by heart:
‘And Ithamar the Smith did as the Lord commanded. He took the precious metals to the forge and wrought the amulets, each one inlaid with costly jewels.
‘Then the Lord breathed into the heat of the furnace and the breath of the Lord forged the amulets.
‘And the Lord spake unto Ithamar, saying, “Receive these four amulets as tokens of the Sacred Covenant which is between us.” ‘
‘A G-Guardian Amulet.’
He knelt on the floor of his garret room, holding the precious fragment of amulet cupped in his shaking hands, exhilarated – and terrified.
He held the proof of the ancient sacred covenant, the birthright of his people.
‘ “But let not these Four be divided. They shall abide in Tsiyon and where They abide, there shall I abide too.” ‘
‘ “Let not these Four be divided”,’ murmured Rahab. In those simple words lay the root of the sadness that shadowed the Tsiyonim’s long years of wandering. In Tsiyon, they had disobeyed that one command, they had divided the amulets. And in dividing them, they had sundered the divine powers, the Winged Guardians that protected them – and the city had fallen. Rahab had heard tales, rumours that fragments were still treasured in distant, scattered Tsiyonim communities. But until this moment, he had never imagined that he would see one, hold one, let alone be made its caretaker.
The weight of responsibility made his shoulders buckle. He cowered in the twilight, paralysed with fear.
‘I want you to take this to Tifereth …’
‘And how shall I get it to Tifereth?’ Rahab asked the absent Jehiel. ‘Do you suppose Schimeon’s going to give his apprentice a whole week’s holiday to go walking in the mountains?’
Now he understood why Jehiel had made him promise to tell no one; the knowledge was dangerous. And now Jehiel had been arrested –
‘Orbiel!’ Rahab said aloud. The sudden moment of clarity chilled him to the bone in spite of the stuffy heat trapped beneath the eaves.
Suppose the investigation into the child’s murder was no more than a blind, an excuse to cover a very different quest? Orbiel was a soldier – but he was also a poet, a scholar, an intellectual. It was not difficult to imagine how alluring the legend of the Guardian Amulets would be to a dilettante like Orbiel …
The methods of questioning employed by the Watch were known to be crude – and effective. How long would Jehiel’s courage support him? How long would it be before the Watch were breaking down Schimeon’s door, looking for Rahab the tailor?
He carefully laid the broken amulet down on the woollen cloth.
Seal it up again in the prayer-case. Hide it.
He looked around in a panic for a candle to melt to re-seal the treasure inside the shell. But to save money, the household economised on candles in summer and Rahab had given his last stump of candle to Chadassah to melt down to make new ones. Beeswax, then, the hard lumps of wax they used to wax button thread …
He fetched his thread bag and pulled out the worn lump of beeswax. One of the glove puppets fell out on to the floor. He picked the red felt rabbit up, weighing it in his hand. Its embroidered mouth grinned lop-sidedly back at him.
Who would think to look in a child’s puppet?
He sealed the amulet back in its case with melted beeswax and then tucked the shell inside the rabbit, stitching it in place.
Then he eased his hand inside the puppet, taking care not to strain the stitches. He waggled the rabbit to and fro a few times, making the ears waggle.
No one would ever guess … or so he hoped.
Lia gazed down at the Belcastel family archives. They were meticulously-penned genealogical documents with each badge and escutcheon painted on yellowing vellum. Each new bride or groom’s family tree was carefully delineated with names and dates …
She slowly traced Berengar’s lineage until her fingertip rested against his name – and the gap beside it where her name and parentage should be. She glanced up at Berengar.
‘But you know my mother was shipwrecked, you know she lost everything –’
Berengar shrugged and replaced the precious documents in the great iron chest, locking it with an ornate key.
‘Why does it matter so much? If we love each other, surely that is enough?’
Berengar took her hands between his own, kissing her fingertips.
‘For us, more than enough. But my family is another matter. It’s only a formality, I know, but the Dowager is quite adamant.’
Lia, hurt, snatched her hands away.
‘A formality? Does she suspect there is bad blood in my family? Corsairs, maybe? Lepers?’
It was the first time since childhood that she had raised her voice to Berengar. A frown clouded his golden gaze.
‘Your noble family is willing enough to receive the generous dowry my father settled on me.’
He opened his mouth to reply – then pursed his lips together and turned away.
She had forgotten how intractable he could be when crossed.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, it was wrong of me.’ She gently touched his sleeves, trying to be conciliatory. ‘If only we could run away together, just the two of us, and forget all this …’
He did not answer.
Lia sat in the window seat in the empty house, tracing a pattern in the dust on the sill with her fingertip.
She and Berengar had never argued like this before. Nothing was going right. Suddenly it seemed they could not agree on anything.
Why was it so important? And why had the Belcastel notary waited till now to raise the matter – when her father was away?
There must be something left from those distant days, some overlooked document or letter …
Lia looked down at the pattern she had traced: the Belcastel shield.
Her mother was not at home; she had gone on one of her rare vists to her sister-in-law, Lia’s aunt Béatrisse, on the other side of the city. She would not be back until dusk.
Even a brooch, a ring with a family name engraved on it …
Lia crept to the door and listened. Emmenza was snoring in the kitchen, indulging in an illicit siesta whilst her mistress was away. The house was still but for the buzz of a fly trapped in the shutters.
Lia crept out into the passageway and tiptoed towards the attic.
Why did it feel as if she was doing something terribly wrong? She had every right to know who she was.
Under the rafters, it was oppressively hot. The fine, powdery dust seemed tinged with a smell of burning; Lia could taste it, dry at the back of her throat.
Trunks filled with discarded clothes were stacked in a corner, alongside Lia’s father’s old sea chests full of curios and souvenirs brought back from his travels.
Lia knelt down and blew dusty cobwebs from the top of the nearest chest.
She opened the chest and a musty smell issued.
All kinds of imaginings began to fill her mind: suppose Zillaïs had a past to conceal? Suppose she had been a woman of loose virtue, a courtesan – and the seawreck story was a mere fabrication, concocted to veil a less than respectable truth?
Her mother a prostitute?
The thought was both outrageous and absurd.
Lia began to giggle – and sent a puff of dust into the sunbaked air. The dust began to tickle her nostrils as she delved into the contents of the chest. Dried artemisias leaves put in to keep the mothgrubs at bay crumbled to dust beneath her searching fingers.
When a tiny worn shoe with red ribbons dangling from it fell out, she picked it up and held it next to her foot; had her feet ever been that small?
Other baby clothes followed; delicate embroidered caps, tied with faded ribbons, a silver and ivory rattle marked with little teethbites, then a battered wooden dog with a broken leg.
‘Ohh,’ Lia said aloud, lifting up the dog, stroking its wooden flank. ‘Toutou. Dear Toutou. I thought they’d thrown you away.’
A chest of memories … redolent not just with the scent of dried artemisias but forgotten babyhood …
She sneezed – and clapped her hands over her face to smother the sound, half-dreading to hear a voice cry out below,’ Who’s up there in the attic?’
It seemed somehow shameful to be searching in this secretive and underhand manner. There was nothing here to be found, only a mother’s mementoes of her daughter’s childhood …
Her fingers brushed against something sharp and hard. Another old toy?
Lia dug down and pulled … Whatever it was was well buried in the midst of all the baby clothes.
It was a shell.
A seashell, intricately whorled, about a handspan in length, pale pink and brown.
‘I don’t remember this.’
Lia weighed it in the palm of her hand. Had her father brought it back for her from one of his voyages? She could not recall; there was a mist, thick as seafog, veiling her memory.
The sea was rarely mentioned in the Maury household. The family never ate shellfish; Zillaïs insisted they were poison to her and would make her violently sick. She would not even permit Emmenza to eat them in the house. Besides, this shell was nothing like the common oysters, scallops and mussels regularly consumed by the people of Arcassanne.
Lia raised it to her ear to listen to the murmur of the distant sea … and as she lifted it she heard a rattle.
There was something inside the shell.
She examined it more closely … were those miniscule letters? If they were, they were in no script that she recognised; they seemed to have once been filled with a gold paint, maybe even gold leaf …
She sat back on her heels.
No ordinary shell, then … maybe a memento of some argosy of her father’s, maybe a betrothal gift from a far country, Djihan-Djihar or the Isles of Ta Ni Gohoa, where bridal customs were so different from their own. Or a birth-gift from one of her father’s sea captains, a rattle which had been put away because its sharp edges might cut a baby’s soft skin? Perhaps the gilded letters were a birth charm in a foreign tongue, wishing long life and good health to the newborn; her father Auger was always bringing home fascinating trifles and treasures: feather fans made from the wings of talking birds; phials of powdered mummy; mermaid’s combs …
But the most curious thing about this treasure was that she had no recollection of ever having seen it before.