One of the idle pleasures of Lia’s childhood summers had been to filch ripe raspberries from the canes in the kitchen garden.
Now Lia and Alissende sat together in the arbour, as if they were still ten years old, sharing their stolen provender, laughing at each other’s juice-smeared mouths.
‘Mmm. They never taste better than this,’ Lia said, wiping the red juice from her lips. ‘Raspberries should always be eaten immediately they’ve been picked. They should never be stewed in pies.’
‘Or preserved in eau-de-vie.’ Alissende made a face.
‘I wish we could have fresh raspberries at our wedding feast. With thick cream,’ Lia said greedily.
‘As long as there’s plenty of wine, no one will care much. And music for dancing.’
‘And cake.’ Lia sighed. ‘Papa promised to bring back spices … and that delicious preserved ginger from Serindha.’
‘What a pity you have no brother, Lia,’ Alissende said with a little sigh. Curious how similar she looked to Berengar when she furrowed her brows – and yet in every other respect they were dissimilar, Alissende fair and freckled with hair of white-gold, Berengar darker, hair gilded bronze. ‘Then there could have been a double wedding.’
‘We shall wait till you find a man you want to marry,’ Lia said, squeezing her friend’s hand.
‘Then be prepared to wait a long time.’ Alissende flashed her a defiant glance. ‘I find all Berengar’s friends horribly dull.’
‘Except Jaufré d’Orbiel?’
Alissende turned her head away but not before Lia had seen the flush of red darkening her fair skin.
‘So I’m right! You do like him!’
‘He’s the lover of Grazide del Azénor. How can I compete with the White Lily of Arcassanne?’
‘Grazide?’ Lia made a dismissive moue. ‘She must be as old as my mother. The famed Lily is fading, withering on the stem … whereas you, ma belle –’
‘Me?’ Alissende tossed back her hair so that the sunlight caught its sheen of gold. ‘Queen of the Tourney. D’you remember?’
Now Lia felt her cheeks burning.
‘You promised we’d forget the whole incident.’
‘It’ll make a wonderful story for the wedding banquet!’ Alissende’ eyes sparkled maliciously. ‘How old were we? Ten? Eleven? The boys were playing at paladins and you – as you always did, you tomboy – how you begged Berengar to let you be a paladin too. And he said –’
‘I didn’t beg! I was as good with a bow as any of them,’ Lia said indignantly.
‘And he said,’ continued Alissende, refusing to be distracted from her re-telling, ‘ “You can’t be Queen of the Tourney because she’s got to have golden hair, so I suppose you’d better be her lady-in-waiting.” ’
‘I didn’t want to be Queen. I didn’t want to sit there – just watching. I wanted to join in. You still don’t understand that, do you?’
‘Always running around with your skirts hitched up like a boy’s tunic,’ Alissende said, collapsing in giggles. ‘Always tangling your embroidery threads because you were testing them as bow strings. And that time you had the quartan fever and they cut your hair and you spoke up feebly from your sickbed, saying, “Good, it only got in the way at target practice –” ’
‘Dem’selle Lia!’
‘It’s Emmenza. What can she want now!’
‘Ignore her,’ said Alissende. ‘Maybe she’ll go away.’
‘Dem’selle!’
Emmenza came puffing down the path towards the arbour.
‘Too late,’ whispered Alissende.
‘What is so important that you must needs disturb us –’ Lia stopped, seeing Emmenza was not alone. Behind her stood the young Tsiyonim tailor, Rahab.
‘This man says he comes from the Sieur Belcastel. He says he is a tailor …’ Emmenza seemed flustered, turning from Rahab to Lia and back again.
‘The Sieur de Belcastel had arranged a fitting for this afternoon,’ the tailor said. Lia noticed for the first time that his voice was spiced with a slight foreign inflection. ‘But when I went to the Great House, they told me he was not at home. They suggested I call here.’
‘Berengar must have forgotten,’ Alissende said.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey –’ Lia began.
‘No matter.’ Rahab gave a little bow and turned to leave.
‘Wait!’ Lia could not contain her curiosity. ‘You said a fitting. Have you any of my clothes ready?’
‘Dem’selle,’ Emmenza said warningly, ‘your mother is ill with a megrim. It would not be seemly –’
‘You can be my chaperon, Emmenza.’ Lia put her arm around Emmenza’s plump shoulders, giving her her most winning smile. ‘Don’t you want to see my wedding gown?’
‘I want to see it,’ Alissende said.
‘I don’t suppose there’d be any great harm then …’ Emmenza said, relenting. ‘But no stripping down to your shift! Whatever you try on goes on over your daygown.’
‘Bless you, Emmenza!’ Lia gave her old nurse a hug.
In the cool of the solar, the tailor opened up his worn carry-bag and carefully unrolled lengths of plain cloth; within, protected from dirt and sun by the cloth, lay the folds of ivory brocade, woven with threads of gold into an intricate formal pattern of lilies and acanthus leaves.
‘Ohh …’ Lia knelt down to gaze at the glittering brocade, stroking it with reverent fingers. ‘Look, Emmenza, isn’t it fine …’
‘It pleases you?’ Rahab said.
‘Oh, yes. It pleases me very much.’
‘This is going to be the grandest occasion in Arcassanne since the Comte married Elvire del Irhuna,’ Alissende said, clapping her hands together.
Lia undid the fastenings on her bean-blue surcoat and shrugged it off as Rahab shook out the creases in the brocade overgown and eased it on over her light berry-sprigged dress.
‘I must warn you, demoiselle, that the gown may look complete – but it’s only held together with tacks, so tread carefully.’
It was heavy, the train falling in rich folds from subtly disguised tucks at the shoulders, yet when Lia turned, the gown flowed in a most pleasing way. She straightened her shoulders and essayed a few paces; the gown’s weight forced her to move slowly, gracefully, as if taking part in a courtly dance.
‘What d’you think?’ she asked.
Emmenza had clasped her hands together.
‘You look like a princess,’ she said, her eyes glistening with tears. For the moment it seemed that she had forgotten her apprehension about letting a stranger into the house.
‘Isn’t the train a little uneven at the back?’ said Alissende.
‘If the demoiselle could just stand still a moment…’ Rahab said through a mouthful of pins. He knelt down and swiftly pinned up the hem. Then sitting back on his heels, he watched critically as Lia walked up and down again.
‘Better,’ he said, nodding.
‘And my gown?’ Alissende demanded.
‘The silver brocade?’ The tailor was transferring pins back into the little velvet pin cushion he wore on his wrist. ‘Maitre Schimeon has finished the cutting. Today he is sewing.’ He stepped forwards to help Lia remove the heavy brocade, then began to wrap it carefully in its protective cloth. Lia watched wistfully, wondering if Berengar might be present when the gown was ready for its next fitting. ‘Perhaps I might ask you, demoiselles, to tell the Sieur de Belcastel that I called … and will await his further instructions.’
‘Isn’t it ill fortune for the bridegroom to see his bride in her gown before the wedding day?’ Alissende said.
‘Not amongst my people,’ said Rahab. Lia thought she caught the glint of a smile in his dark eyes as he fastened the straps of the bundle and hoisted it on to his shoulder.
‘I will give my brother your message,’ Alissende said, a little petulantly. ‘And tell your Maitre Schimeon to make sure that my gown is ready for the next fitting.’
Emmenza insisted on calling Peire in from the stable to escort the tailor off the property and into the lane.
‘He’s quite good-looking … for a tradesman,’ Alissende commented, watching Peire unbolting the garden door to let Rahab out.
‘Is he? I didn’t notice,’ Lia said, affecting disinterest. Though obviously, you did, my lady Alissende.’
Then, before Alissende’s mock-blow could hit her, she ran laughing into the garden, her friend in pursuit.
‘Dem’selles, please!’ Emmenza cried, trying in vain to shush them. ‘Remember madame is not well, remember her headache.’
‘Then we’ll take our drinks outside so as not to disturb her,’ Lia said. ‘Bring us a jug of borage watar, Emmenza. We’ll be in the arbour.’
As soon as Rahab entered the Quarter, he sensed something was wrong. No one was about; the streets were deserted at the very time in late afternoon when the shadows had begun to lengthen and the Tsiyonim came out to take the air after the intense heat of midday.
Then he caught sight of Jaufré d’Orbiel’s Hawks at the end of the street. He shrank into a doorway. There were three of them, coming swaggering down the street, coming towards him –
Mandel the Shoemaker appeared, hurrying along, head down, clutching a pair of boots.
As Rahab watched, helpless, the Hawks moved in, barring Mandel’s way, pinning him up against a wall.
‘Who found the body?’
‘His name. Tell us his name and you shall go free.’
No weapons were unsheathed, there was no overt threat of violence – just their loud, arrogant voices and their rough handling.
Who found the body?
He should have gone to Mandel’s aid. He should have cried out, ‘Let him go, it’s me you’re looking for!’ But instead he scuttled on, despising himself for his cowardice … yet knowing that to come forward would mean beating, imprisonment – death. His sense of self-preservation was too well honed by the years on the run.
They don’t care about finding the murderer. They want a scapegoat. And Rahab the little tailor is just the man they’re looking for.
He turned the corner of the narrow street and saw –
Beneath the tailor’s sign of shears and thread, Schimeon’s door had been wrenched off its hinges.
‘Dear God, no.’
He ventured nearer, pausing on the threshold, his fingers moving out automatically to touch the prayer-case –
Sharp splinters grazed his fingertips. The prayer-case shell was gone. Ripped off.
He entered cautiously, a step at a time. Everything was turned upside down, chests had been forced open, their contents thrown out on to the floor. He stepped over spilled spices, yards of unspooled thread …
‘Anyone at home?’ he called softly. His voice shook. Had they taken them all? And why Schimeon – when the one they wanted was Rahab?
He stopped, listening. His ears had caught a faint sound, soft, like the mewling of a kitten.
In the kitchen he noticed what he took at first to be a heap of clothes in the corner by the fire. As he came nearer, he saw the heap of clothes move, heard the faint sound again, the sound of smothered weeping.
‘Chadassah?’ he said tentatively. ‘Chadassah – it’s me. Rahab.’
‘Go away.’
Two little faces peeped out from the fireplace: Iudith and Thirzah, their eyes wide with fear.
‘Mama. It is Rahab.’
Kneeling down, Rahab put one hand on Chadassah’s heaving shoulders.
‘What has happened here? Was it Orbiel?’
She raised her head from beneath her veils. Her hand clutched at his.
‘They came – they tore the place apart – they arrested them, Rahab. My husband, m-my beautiful daughter.’
‘Michal? But – why?’
‘They wouldn’t say. They just took them.’ She reared up, eyes suddenly blazing. ‘But if one of Orbiel’s men so much as touches a hair on her head –’ She turned away and spat.
The little girls ventured out cautiously from their hiding place, Iudith sucking her thumb.
‘You can’t stay here,’ Rahab said. ‘They may be back.’ Thirzah silently curled her hand in his; her fingers felt hot and sticky.
Chadassah shook her head.
‘For the sake of the little ones, Chadassah –’
‘Where would we go? Nowhere is safe.’
‘Please …’ Rahab begged again. ‘We must leave this house. We must go somewhere safe.’
Chadassah had stopped weeping. But now she sat like a statue amidst the ruins of her ransacked home, immobile, staring into nothing.
‘It’s what Schimeon would want.’
Chadassah’s lips moved. The words came out in a halting whisper.
‘I’m not going without Michal. Or my husband.’
‘But it’s not safe here. Come to Baruch’s house. He has cellars big enough to hide the whole community. Schimeon will know to find you there.’
She looked up at him then, her eyes red with weeping.
‘For the little ones’ sake, then …’
Rahab let out a silent sigh of relief. ‘Come on, girls.’ He held out his hands to Iudith and Thirzah. ‘We’re going for a little walk.’
Thirzah shook her head.
‘Nasty men,’ she said vehemently.’ Don’t like the nasty men.’
‘They’ve gone,’ Rahab said. ‘They won’t come back.’ He prayed he was right.
Iudith hung back.
‘Not going without the rabbits.’
‘The ra –’ Rahab, aghast, stared at her. Had Jaufré’s men searched upstairs too? ‘Wait. I’ll go fetch them.’ He ran up the stairs, two at a time, flinging open the attic door.
‘Don’t let it fall into Gentile hands …’
His mattress lay on the floor, gashed and slashed, spilling its horsehair stuffing. His thread-bag had been turned inside out; costly spools of bright-coloured silks were tangled and coiled together. Even his clothes had been shaken and thrown down higgledy-piggledy.
And then he spotted a lone red ear poking up; he grabbed it and pulled out one felt rabbit – and then its twin. A quick pressure of the fingers reassured him that the shell was still intact, sewn inside its incongruous hiding place. The Hawks had found the toys – and discarded them.
Fools. He could feel a slow smile spreading over his face, exultant in the knowledge that he had tricked them.
‘Fools!’ he shouted aloud defiantly.
‘I win – again.’
Lia and Alissende were playing each other at chequers for sugared comfits.
‘Lia!’ Alissende cried. ‘You’re cheating!’
‘Don’t be such a poor loser,’ Lia said, grinning as she drew the pink and white comfits towards her and popped one into her mouth.
‘I saw you move that counter. You thought I wasn’t looking.’
‘So what if I did?’ Lia said with her sweetest smile. ‘Raise the stakes this time?’
‘I’m not playing if you’re going to cheat,’ Alissende said, sulking.
‘Good evening, Peire. Is my sister Alissende here?’
Lia sprang up, recognising Berengar’s voice.
‘Berengar!’ she cried. ‘Where have you been?’
Peire, cap in hand, ushered Berengar into the solar.
‘You forgot the fitting this afternoon,’ Lia said, shaking her finger at her fiancé.
‘Yes, you forgot,’ echoed Alissende. ‘We had to send the poor little tailor away.’
‘And he’d struggled all the way here in the heat, carrying the clothes.’
‘So you’d better have a good excuse.’
‘There was trouble outside the Palais de Justice,’ Berengar said when the girls had finished their chiding. ‘I had to wait until the crowd had dispersed.’
‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’ Lia said.
‘The mother of the dead boy and her supporters. Aymon ordered arrests to placate the crowd. I’m damned if I understand what’s going on,’ Berengar said, shaking his head.
‘Why? What is there to understand?’ said Alissende, helping herself to Lia’s comfits.
‘Why the Tsiyonim don’t do more to help themselves. You ask them a question, they answer with another. They turn everything around. If they have nothing to hide,’ he said, frowning, ‘why are they so obtuse?’
‘So Jaufré still suspects it was one of them who –’ Lia faltered. Killed the boy. She could not bring herself to say it out loud.
‘And those shells.’ He had not heard her question. ‘Outside every front door, a shell. A seashell.’
‘Shells,’ Lia echoed.
‘Whenever they visit each other, first they kiss the shell and mutter some kind of charm.’
‘But what does it mean?’ Lia asked in a whisper.
‘Jaufré says the shells have some secret ritual significance.’
‘Shells?’ Lia said again. She felt a small, sick twisting in the pit of her stomach. Could the shell she had found hidden in the attic be Tsiyonim? Why would her father have brought home a souvenir of secret ritual significance?
‘Ouf.’ Berengar stifled a yawn behind his fist. ‘I’m tired. Come, Alissende, we mustn’t keep Gran’mère waiting.’
Alissende placed one hand on his shoulder.
‘Why not leave the Hawks, Berengar?’ she said. ‘The Sieur de Belcastel has better things to do, more fitting to his status.’
‘You could spend more time at the farm, the vineyard,’ suggested Lia.
‘Na. Farm talk bores me, sweeting.’ He bent to kiss her farewell, brushing her cheek with his lips. ‘Give my greetings to your mother.’
Lia nodded. She watched Alissende and Berengar walk through the garden to the gate. Usually she was sad to see them go, sad at the end to the merriment and laughter.
But tonight she felt confused.
Afflicted by a belated pang of guilt, Lia took her mother a tisane of feverfew.
The shutters in Zillaïs’s bedchamber had been closed all day. Lia could only just make out her mother’s face, pale in the gloom. Zillaïs had been plagued by these sick headaches for years; Lia had learned long ago to tiptoe about until the attack had passed.
‘Do you need anything else, Mother?’
‘No,’ Zillaïs murmured. ‘Thank you …
Outside every front door a shell.
Lia went to her own room and shut the door, standing with her back against it, listening for Emmenza and Peire to bolt the outer doors and dampen down the kitchen fire for the night.
A seashell.
At last all was quiet. Holding her lantern, Lia crept out on to the landing and, hitching up her skirts, went up the open stair into the attic.
Kneeling down in front of the dusty chest, she opened the catch and delved down into the tightly packed layers to find the shell.
She felt the sharp edge graze her searching fingers as she drew it carefully from its place of concealment and held it to the lantern flame.
A gift. It must be a birth-gift. Her father met all kinds of people on his travels. Some Tsiyon merchant must have pressed the shell upon him eighteen years ago to celebrate the birth of a daughter.
Secret ritual significance.
She knelt in the lanternlight, staring at the shell, turning it round and round in her fingers, remembering …
Tentatively, she raised it to her ear.
The distant murmur of voices, many voices, rising like a distant stormwind …
‘What are you doing?’
The shell dropped from her fingers. Looking up, she saw her mother’s face, white in the moonlight, staring at her.
‘I – I –’ Lia could not speak; the expression on her mother’s face was too terrible.
‘What have you done, child? What have you done!’
Zillaïs crossed the attic floor and snatched the shell from her hands.
‘I’ve done nothing!’ Now that the shock of discovery had subsided, Lia was angry. What right had Zillaïs to shout at her? All she had done was unpack an old chest, full of mementoes …
‘Nothing. Nothing!’ Zillaïs clutched the shell to her; with her grey hair unplaited, falling loose about her shoulders, she seemed like some wild, demented fury. ‘Do you know what this means? The end of your hopes, your dreams. The end of your betrothal to Berengar –’
‘How can that be?’ Lia cried.
‘We should never have tried to ally ourselves to such a powerful house as the Belcastels.’ Zillaïs sank down on to one of the chests, still clutching the shell. ‘Your father only ever wanted the best for you – but he could not see the pitfalls. Because he is a good man, a compassionate man, he does not always understand that others are not like him –’
‘Mother!’ Lia’s voice shook. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Berengar won’t marry anyone tainted with Tsiyonim blood. That’s what I’m saying.’
‘Tsiyonim!’ Lia went over to her mother. Questions buzzed in her head like angry bees. ‘How can I have Tsiyonim blood? How can –’
‘It is passed down through the mother, not the father.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. My name was Zillah bet Ithamar. Your father thought it was best I should change it.’
‘But – but why?’ Lia said, stunned. ‘Why did you never tell me? Why keep it a secret?’
‘Why? You have kept company with the Belcastels all these years and you ask me why?’
‘I need to know!’
‘Because I thought it best. Because I wanted your childhood to be free of prejudice, free of fear. I wanted you to have the childhood I never had.’
‘But I’ve been living a lie. I’m – I’m not who I thought I was.’ Lia stared at the shell clasped in her mother’s fingers. ‘I’m someone else.’
‘You are who you have been brought up to be,’ Zillaïs said coldly. ‘A demoiselle of Arcassanne.’
Lia could not understand why Zillaïs was so angry – wasn’t she the one who had been deceived?
‘No, I’m not. Not inside. Not any more.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Zillaïs said with a terrible, chilling disdain. Lia stared at her mother, open-mouthed. ‘You have no idea of what it is to be Tsiyonim.’
‘And now I’m – I’m nothing. Now I belong nowhere. Now you say my marriage can never take place –’ Suddenly sobs rose in Lia’s throat, stifling her voice. Weeping, she ran from the attic to her room, slamming the door shut.
If only Papa were home … he would make everything all right again.
But Papa would not be home for two long months.
Zillaïs stood with her back against her chamber door, as though to keep out the shadows of her past.
Why? Why now? After all these years?
She could hear Lia’s sobbing, the uncomprehending, bitter sobbing of a child who does not understand why she has been rebuked. Poor, wilful, impetuous Lia, always rushing in where caution should prevail. Her heart pained her to hear her daughter weeping so bitterly – yet she could not bring herself to go to comfort her. Not yet.
She had tried to protect Lia by keeping the truth from her. Whenever Lia had asked about her grandparents, tears had filled Zillaïs’s eyes. And Auger had always stepped in, protecting her, saying, ‘It’s still painful for your mother to talk about her family. Another time …’
Slowly, with dragging feet, she moved towards the round bronze mirror that gleamed dully on the wall. A bridal gift from Auger, brought from the far east. She gazed unwillingly into it. The reflection that gazed back shocked her: the colour had faded from her lips, fine worry-lines had appeared around mouth and brow, and her dark eyes looked warily back, beneath brows more silver than black.
The face of a ghost.
The ghost of her mother Liah.
Zillaïs steeled herself to look again at the bronze reflection. The woman who might have been her mother stared back.
‘Mamma. Help me. What should I do, what should I do?’
A voice in the back of her mind whispered, ‘You’re a grown woman now, Zillaïs. You know what you should do.’
Zillaï’s sat down on the bed, the bed she had shared with Auger these past twenty years.
If only he were here, beside her, to advise her –
‘It’s your responsibility, Zillaïs, yours and no one else’s,’ came her mother’s whispervoice again. ‘Auger’s a good man, a kind man, but he’s not one of us, he wouldn’t understand.’
‘All these years I have lived in this city as Dame Maury, the merchant’s wife. No one has forced me to wear a saffron badge, no one has spat at me, called me names. I wanted that freedom for Lia. Was that so wrong?’
‘Freedom? What kind of freedom forces a woman to live a lie? To abandon her faith? To creep to her room on the holy nights to light the candles in secret, to whisper the words of the evening prayers so that no one suspects, no one hears?’
‘But she found the shell, Mamma, the shell. How can I begin to tell her about Tolonada –’
‘Don’t you think she deserves to be told what it means to be born into the House of Ithamar?’
‘No,’ Zillaïs whispered, her hands rising to press her temples as she felt a sudden throb of blinding pain. What was she doing, talking to a ghost? Arguing with a woman dead these twenty years? ‘I wanted to spare her. It’s my burden, not hers.’
‘ “Blood of the pure, blood of the innocent …” It’s calling to her, Zillaïs, just as it once called to you.’