Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King Read Free Book Online

his cut from the “cousin’s” business would have to be large to make up for the gratuity these three were no longer going to give him, but they entered the white-clothed café with the air of travellers lost for weeks amidst desert dunes, and the maitre d’ clucked over them like a broody hen.
    I looked down at what I wore, and the state of my once-new yellow slippers, and knew that there was not a chance in hell that I should be allowed inside.
    Still, I was loath to part entirely with such a valuable source of information. In an hour, maybe two, they might be sufficiently restored to their British indomitability, ready to plunge again into the fray, dropping nuggets of Intelligence behind them.
    I wandered off, bought and ate various foodstuffs that, I was sure, were far tastier (and probably more hygienic) than the pseudo-French dishes my three countrywomen were being fed. I even dared to sit for a time, parked just inside one tiny establishment, eating scraps of spiced chicken from a skewer while the two men beside me argued politics in Arabic (neither the name Raisuli nor Krim came up, and the men seemed divided on the benefits of the French on trade). When I moved to an equally diminutive tea shop down the way, a similar argument held sway. And a leisurely purchase of some salted almonds gave me insight into the views of the two shopkeepers on opposite sides of the “street,” separated by ten feet of roadway and ten miles of opinion.
    Yes, I found many things in the course of that day wandering the Fez suq —or rather, if the ladies were correct, medina. I found sights and smells and a world I’d never have guessed existed. I found enough distraction to make me forget for minutes at a time my impossible situation and even, occasionally, my headache. I found a Mediaeval city being whirled headlong towards the twentieth century, yet secure enough in its identity not to be frightened by that speed. I found a tight-knit and age-old community that opened affectionate arms to outsiders. I discovered patterns in its confusion, humour in its voices, beauty in its decay.
    And dark trouble at its edges.
    What the refugee family and quartet of intellectuals had made me wonder and the vigilance of the soldiers had underscored, what the opinions of the shopkeepers confirmed and the military aeroplanes emphasised—and the English ladies nearly stated aloud—was confirmed by that lunch-time hour amidst the hurly-burly of the medina.
    Morocco was, it seemed, a country feeling the ugly stirrings of civil war.
    With the Front just to the north of Fez.

C HAPTER F OUR
    I wandered back towards the white-draped restaurant, pausing to take on a supply of sweetened almonds and dried mulberries, drinking another glass of mint tea, adding a small pen-knife to my arsenal, and a cheap cotton handkerchief. My path described a circle, and as I drew near the French café, a means of lingering occurred to me. I stopped at a fruiterer’s stand to buy five oranges. Across from the café was a deserted doorway with a step. I evicted a sleeping goat, spread the handkerchief before my feet, put two 25 centime coins in it, took out the oranges, and began to juggle. Three oranges became four, and then five—to my astonishment, a couple of white-draped ladies added coins—and then, when the stir at the front of the café proved to be the foreign trio, I dropped one, and the act collapsed. My audience, composed of one muleteer, a swathed lady, and three filthy children, dispersed as well, leaving me my coins but snatching two of the oranges.
    I hastily gathered the remaining fruit and the money, and followed the ladies—who, as I’d anticipated, were restored and ready for more.
    I listened to the English conversation drifting back—the café’s food, a trip outside the city they were considering—and felt as if I’d stepped inside my own home. My headache even receded.
    “—do not think it advisable,” the worried one was