A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dimity was sick on the boat on the way to Tangier.

“I thought your father was a fisherman?” said Élodie, standing on the deck of the steamer with the wind fluttering her hair around her and whipping the words away.

“But I’m not,” Dimity pointed out, doubling over the railing again as her stomach heaved. By then there was nothing left to come up, and she wiped a string of spittle from her chin. “I’ve never been on a boat before.”

“Can we get you something, Mitzy? A glass of water?” said Delphine.

“Ginger’s best, if they have it; or mint,” she croaked, her throat ragged and sore; so dizzy she daren’t let go of the railing. She looked around for Charles and saw him on a bench on the upper deck, sketching a pair of little boys who were playing with their model airplanes. She was half glad that he wasn’t watching her being sick, and half jealous of the boys. Celeste was almost as unhappy at sea as she was, but the Moroccan woman remained in her cabin, lying down with the room darkened. A kind of quiet, private dignity in distress that Dimity wished she could emulate, but when she went indoors she only felt worse, and her head started to pound as well, the blood throbbing through her temples as though it had doubled in volume. Her only hope was to watch the horizon, and remain on the leeward side of the deck. When Delphine returned from the galley with a sprig of mint, asking if she should boil it or what, Dimity snatched it from her and chewed the leaves raw, desperately hoping that the lurching in her gut would stop. At least the mint masked the foul taste in her mouth. Élodie watched her with distaste and a trace of sympathy.

“It’ll be worth it when we get there, honestly,” she said staunchly.

After a while, exhaustion sent Dimity inside, where she lay down on a bench beneath a window to sleep. She had no idea what time it was when Delphine shook her awake, her face alight with excitement.

“Come and see,” she said, pulling at Dimity’s hands until she rose, shakily, to her feet. Delphine led her back out onto the deck, where Charles, Celeste, and Élodie were already at the rail. The light was dazzling, and Dimity shut her eyes instinctively. Such light, so strong through her eyelids that they glowed redder than a fire. When she could open them, it was all-consuming, and she flinched. “Look! We’re here. Morocco!” Delphine said, nudging her closer to the rail. Finally able to see, Dimity gasped.

The city of Tangier rose up from the water’s edge all around the arched harbor, almost too bright to look at; clustered white houses like jumbled building blocks, with palm trees and fragile-looking towers rising up from the mêlée. Here and there, a vibrant slew of pink flowers tumbled over a wall or from a balcony. Above the sparkling turquoise water, the city seemed to glow. The port thronged with boats of all shapes and sizes, from tiny fishing vessels painted every color under the sun to huge, ponderous cargo steamers and passenger ships like the one she was aboard. On the dock, men with dark skins and hard faces were arguing and dealing, loading and unloading. Down on the quayside next to their boat, a heated exchange was carrying on between a man with skin the color of treacle, wearing billowing green robes, and a white man in a smart linen suit. Dimity gaped at it all in amazement. The men’s voices were an alien babble, every bit as incomprehensible as the scene stretching out before her. Just as Delphine had once said, the sea was a different blue than in England, as was the sky; the thin towers looked strange and unearthly, too tall and precarious to stand up to a storm. The air smelled of the sea but also of heat and dust; of spices she couldn’t name; flowers she had never seen before. Stunned, she turned to look at Delphine and found four sets of eyes upon her, and smiles at her amazed expression.

Élodie burst out laughing.

“You should see your face, Mitzy! I told you it’d be worth it, didn’t I?” she said. Dumbly, Dimity nodded. Celeste patted her hand softly, where it clasped the rail for support.

“Poor Mitzy! It must all be very disturbing for you. But breathe it in, immerse yourself, and soon you will come to love it. This is Morocco, my home. This is a place of wonders and beauty, cruelty and hardship. This is the landscape of my heart,” she said, turning back to take in the view. The sun did not seem to hurt Celeste’s eyes; it shone on her black hair and brought it to life.

“Come along,” said Charles. “Time to get off and find somewhere to eat. Once your stomachs have settled, ladies, you will be ravenous.”

“What do you think?” said Delphine, taking Dimity’s hand and holding it tightly as they turned to disembark. Dimity searched for words to express how she was feeling. How the heat and the light and the colors seemed to fill her up to bursting, pouring into her soul like elation. How she could not quite believe that such a place existed.

“I think… I think it’s… like a dream. I think this must be another world altogether,” she said, her throat sore and her head thumping.

“It is,” Delphine said with a smile. “It is another world altogether.”

They stayed only one night in Tangier, a night in which Dimity slept little, sniffing the strange air and the alien smells carried on it, feeling her head reel. It was giddy, dazzling; everything as alien and nonsensical as an imagined land. She woke many times in the night, feeling as though the land beneath her was hollow, insubstantial. As though none of it was solid, and the crust of it might give way and tumble her into nothingness. After a while, she realized why. The boom of the sea was gone; the way it echoed up through her feet in Blacknowle, beating like a vast heart, all of the time. Without it, she felt as airy as a sprite; like a kite with its string cut. In one dream it was her own leaden heart that had stopped, and waking was like being reborn in a new skin.

They hired a car and chauffeur for the long drive to Fez, the journey made slow by sand that had blown over the road in places. The car rocked along gently as the wind nudged it, and Dimity stared out of the window while the others slept, still stunned by how huge everything was, how wild and different. The sky was flawless, hard and unforgiving. Under the fierce sun, the land shimmered with heat; brown dust and rocks and parched-looking scrub, as far as the eye could see. In the far distance, along the road they had just traveled, Dimity thought she could see the dust plume of another vehicle, but it was hard to tell. It was late in the day and the sun was casting long shadows from even the smallest rock and shrub when at last the city appeared in front of them, sprawling low against the broad plain. At first Dimity thought it was no bigger than Wareham, but the closer they drew the more it seemed to spread. The others roused themselves, and Celeste pointed out that the compact cluster of buildings, which Dimity had thought was the whole city, was in fact only the colonial buildings, where the French and other Europeans lived.

“Because we think we’re too special to live with the Arabs and Berbers,” Delphine said mildly.

“Because we’re prudent enough to keep a respectful distance,” Charles corrected her.

“Beyond these buildings is Fez el-Djid. The new Fez.” Celeste pointed to the city, where twinkling lamps had already been lit on the shady side of the streets.

“Is it new? I thought the city was old,” said Dimity.

“The new is only new compared to the old. The new is still many hundreds of years old, Mitzy. But the old… Fez el-Bali is the oldest city in Morocco not built by the Romans or other ancient peoples. Here it is, here. Look!” Celeste swept her arm across the sudden view as the car slowed to a halt at the edge of a valley and the city poured down into the low ground beneath them; rooftops so clustered and chaotic that Dimity’s eye could not trace the line of any one street for more than a few yards.

They got out of the car to see better, standing in a single line and staring out over the city. A steady breeze came in from the south, seeming even hotter than the still air, like the breath of some huge animal. Celeste breathed in deeply, and smiled.

“The wind comes in from the desert today. Can you feel the heat, Mitzy? Girls? That is a desert wind; the arifi, the thirsty wind. You can sense the power of it. On a day like today, the sun there would kill a man, as sure as a knife to the heart. It drinks the very life from your blood. I have felt it-the urge to lie down is strong, so strong; and then, you are no more. Worn away, just one more grain of sand in the vast ocean of the Sahara.”

“Celeste, you’re scaring them,” Charles chided her, but Celeste tipped up her chin defiantly.

“Perhaps they ought to be scared. This is no gentle land we are in. It must be respected.” Dimity stood up straighter, trying to shake off the lassitude of the long journey in case she should fall asleep and become nothing but sand. They all felt it, the fear and the soporific breeze. For a while nobody spoke, and the soft moaning wind and the buzzing flies were all they could hear.

Then Dimity heard a man singing, though it wasn’t like any kind of song she had ever heard before. A high, thin stream of words, at once fragile and deeply compelling, rich with meanings she would never understand. There was no sound of cars or traffic from the city, only the barking of dogs, the rumble of trolley wheels, and now and then the braying of a mule or bleat of a goat; a low background hum of many lives, lived close together.

“Why is that man singing? What’s he singing about?” Dimity asked nobody in particular. Her voice was hushed, and she was unable to take her eyes from the labyrinth below them.

“That’s the muezzin, like a priest, calling the faithful to prayer,” said Charles.

“Like the church bells at home?”

“Yes.” Charles chuckled. “Exactly like that.”

“I like the song better than the bells,” she said.

“But you do not know what he is singing. What words he says,” Celeste pointed out, quite seriously.

“That don’t matter much, with a song. A song is only half words, and the other half music. I can understand the music,” she said. She glanced at Charles and found him watching her with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Good, Mitzy,” he said. “Very good.” At this, Dimity flushed with pleasure.

“Girls, did you know the foundations of Fez el-Bali were laid on the site of a Berber camp?”

“Yes, Mummy. You’ve told us before,” said Élodie. Celeste put an arm around each of her daughters and smiled.

“Well, some things are worth saying more than once. There is Berber blood in your veins. This city is in your blood.”

“Well, Mitzy? What do you think?” said Charles, and Dimity felt all their eyes upon her, waiting for her verdict or for some keen observation.

“I don’t think anything,” she whispered, and saw Charles’s and Celeste’s faces register disappointment. She swallowed, and thought hard, but her mind was reeling. “I can’t think anything. It’s… everything,” she said. Charles smiled and patted her shoulder in a vaguely comforting way.

“There now. You must be exhausted. Come on. Back in the car and let’s get to the guesthouse,” he said.

“Aren’t we going to stay with your family, Celeste?” Dimity asked, before she thought to check her tongue. Delphine shot her a significant look, and Celeste frowned slightly.

“No,” she said shortly.

They had to leave the car at the city walls, since the streets were too narrow to drive along, and walk the last quarter of a mile to where they would be staying. The door of the riad, which was to be their guesthouse, was tall and elaborately carved, but like the rest of the buildings fronting the narrow street, it appeared to be crumbling and disheveled. Dimity felt slightly disappointed until they walked through the doors and into a tiled courtyard with a marble fountain at its center, stone benches strewn with faded mats and cushions, and straggly roses growing up around the pillars that supported the upper floors of the house. As one, the girls gazed up in wonder. There was something sublime about coming into a building only to find the clear, pale-green sky still spreading out above. One star had come out to shine; a single point of light that glistened. The floor was made of intricate blue-and-white mosaic, the walls part tiled, part plastered and painted, and everywhere there were tiny fragments missing and cracks and places where tiles had come loose and been lost; imperfections that seemed to make the whole only more magical.

“They do not build like this in Dorset, do they?” said Celeste, close to Dimity’s ear, and Dimity shook her head mutely.

A tray of heavily sweetened mint tea was brought out to them as they seated themselves in the courtyard, and a servant ran in and out of the door and up the stairs, carrying their luggage in from a handcart, a few pieces at a time. Dimity stared at the boy each time he passed; at his curling black hair and coffee-colored skin. When she saw him with her small, tatty carpet bag in one of his hands, her stomach clenched peculiarly. Nobody had ever carried anything for her before, let alone a servant. Somebody she could make a request of and have him be duty-bound to obey her. She craned her neck to keep sight of him as long as she could, until he vanished around a turn in the staircase. Delphine, sitting next to her, gave her a nudge in the ribs and another significant look.

“Not bad, I agree,” she whispered. “But not a patch on Tyrone Power.” Their hushed laughter spiraled around the courtyard, bouncing from the crumbling, blush-colored plaster.

Dimity, Delphine, and Élodie were to share a room with a low vaulted ceiling from which an iron fretwork lamp hung, casting fragmented patterns of light. It had a cool, tiled floor and flaking walls painted ocher. The beds were made up of low, hard mattresses with small bolsters as pillows and a single woven blanket folded at the foot of each. Tall windows opened onto a stone balustrade with a view to the neighboring building in front, and down the hill over the rest of the city to the right. The sky was by then a velvety black, lit up with more stars than Dimity had ever seen before.

“It’s like a different sky, isn’t it?” said Delphine, coming to stand beside her while Élodie did handstands against the wall behind them, the legs of her pajamas riding up to show her skinny shins. “Hard to imagine the same moon and stars shining down on England.”

“There are nights in Blacknowle, in the summer, when perhaps there are this many stars. Perhaps; but the sky is never as black, and the stars never as bright,” said Dimity. “Doesn’t it get cooler, in the nighttime?”

“By dawn it will be, yes, and out in the desert it gets freezing. But for a long time after the sun sets, it stays warm here in the city. The buildings trap the heat,” said Delphine. Dimity looked down at the narrow streets, and could almost see the hot air lying there, fat and supine as an overfed dog. Suddenly she was so weary she could hardly stand, and had to lean against the balustrade for support. “Are you all right? Have you drunk enough water?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“You have to drink lots here, even if you don’t feel thirsty. The heat makes you faint, otherwise. I’ll fetch you some.”

“Get me some, too, Delphine!” said Élodie, still upside down as her sister left the room.

The girls stayed up late, Élodie and dimity listening, rapt, to Delphine’s lurid tales of white slavers in Morocco capturing European men and forcing them to work until they died, building palaces and roads and whole cities. Capturing European women and forcing them to marry fat, ugly sultans; to live forever in the harem, never allowed outside. Eventually, the two younger girls surrendered to sleep, but in spite of her weariness Dimity was awake for much longer, after the whole house had fallen quiet. She stayed at the window and clasped the warm stone of the balustrade, breathing in deeply, trying to pick individual scents from the warm, loaded air.

There were roses, and jasmine, too; the resinous smell of cypress trees, almost like the sea-battered pines of Dorset but subtly different. On the breeze came a rich, herby smell, like sage or rosemary, as well as the stink of hot animal skins and manure; human sewage, too-a privy smell, sweet and familiar, not constant but rising up now and then. There was a sharp, leathery, meaty smell she could not guess the source of; a metallic smell that was almost like blood and made her uneasy; a prickly scent of spices she half recognized from the food they had eaten and the pastilla Celeste often cooked at Littlecombe. And beneath all these new things was a striking absence-the missing salty breath of the sea. Thinking of Littlecombe, and Blacknowle, gave Dimity a jolt, and she noticed that they seemed to have receded far into the distance-not just in miles but in time, too. As if her whole life up until that point had been a dream, one that was now fading fast from memory the way all dreams do upon waking. This was a wholly new life; one where the heartbeat of the sea no longer tethered her, no longer trapped her own into keeping time with it. One where she was free and unfettered, and unfamiliar, and different. She gripped the stone tightly, and felt so happy that she wasn’t sure she could stand it.

After breakfast in the morning, Celeste readied her two daughters and prepared to set off for her family’s house, outside the walls of Fez el-Bali in the more spacious streets of Fez el-Djid. She combed the girls’ hair and clipped it neatly back from their faces with quick, tense fingers, tweaking their cotton skirts and blouses into neater lines. Dimity looked down at her own attire-the same worn-out felt skirt she often wore at home-and smoothed it down self-consciously.

“Will I look all right, dressed as I am?” she asked anxiously, and Celeste looked up with a frown until a look of comprehension replaced it.

“Oh, Mitzy! I am sorry, but for this visit I must go with just my girls. It has been more than a year since I saw my parents… And after such a long time the first meeting should be just for us. Do you understand?” She came to stand in front of Dimity, put her hands on her shoulders, and scrutinized her from an arm’s length. Dimity nodded, with a sudden lump in her throat. “Good girl. Charles has gone for a walk but I am sure when he comes back he will want to start some sketches. We will be back… Well. I am not sure when. It depends… Anyway, we will see you later on.” She ushered the younger girls towards the door, and they each gave Dimity a smile as they passed-an apologetic one from Delphine, a heartless one from Élodie. In the doorway, Celeste looked back at her. “You cannot wear those woolen clothes here. You will be too hot. When we come back I will find something lighter for you to wear.” She nodded to confirm the promise, and was gone.

Left alone, Dimity hugged her arms tight around herself, and fought against a wave of nerves. Transfixed by uncertainty, she didn’t know whether to stay in her room or leave it. She didn’t know what was right, what the rules were. She tiptoed to the top of the stairs and looked down at the courtyard, where the fountain was splashing gently and the curly-haired boy was sweeping the floor with a stiff-bristled broom. Muted voices echoed up to her, their meanings lost in a blur of fluid, incomprehensible sound. She walked all the way around the terrace onto which their bedroom door opened, staring at the ornate tiles and the carvings on the wooden doors, peering down at the courtyard from every available angle, and up at the sky, which was clear and blue overhead. She had never seen such a fine building, let alone been inside one, or stayed in one. Eventually she plucked up the courage to go downstairs, but when she got to the bottom she saw that the front door was shut. Making sure the coast was clear, she went over to it and tried the handle, tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Suddenly, the servant boy appeared beside her and spoke, his teeth very white in his dark face. Dimity stepped back, her shoulders hitting the door. The boy smiled and spoke again, this time with words that had the more regular, almost familiar sound of the French she sometimes heard Charles and Celeste speak. But even though she could pick out distinct words, she was none the wiser as to their meaning. She edged away from him, then turned and fled back up the stairs.

Hours later she dozed on her low mattress, gazing up at the ceiling and drifting in and out of a dream in which she was lost in the middle of the vast dry landscape they had crossed the day before, and could feel the wind turning her to sand and blowing her away, one grain at a time. Footsteps outside and a sudden knock roused her, and Charles appeared around the door before she had a chance to answer. He had caught the sun across the bridge of his nose and along his cheekbones, and his hair was sweaty and windswept. Dimity scrambled to her feet, brushing back her hair and fighting to focus her mind. She couldn’t tell if her dizziness was from standing up too fast, or from the devastating sight of him.

“Mitzy! Why are you here alone?”

“They went to Celeste’s family, only I couldn’t go since I’m not family,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Charles frowned. “Well, she shouldn’t have left you here by yourself like that; hardly seems fair. Come on. Are you hungry? I was going to eat, then take a mule up to the Merenid Tombs above the city. Would you like to come with me?”

“Yes,” she said at once, and then began to wonder how she would ride a mule with any modesty while wearing a felt skirt.

She followed Charles, almost trotting to keep up, as he strode down the dusty streets deeper into the heart of Old Fez. She dodged between thronging people, moving like slow-shifting snakes in either direction, all dressed in robes of chalky gray or fawn and brown; desert colors, as though the sand and rock and crumbling plaster all around had seeped into them. Small shops lined the street, their wares more often than not hanging on hooks outside, making the way even narrower. Vast metal plates and jars; bolts of fabric; huge bunches of dried herbs; leather goods of every description; lanterns, baskets, machine parts, and unidentifiable hardware.

“We won’t go too far in. There’s a little place not far from here where we can eat, and a man next door who will loan us some mules for the rest of the day,” Charles called back over his shoulder. A sudden flurry of wings made Dimity look up, and a scattering of bright white pigeons rose up from a rooftop. Also watching them were two tall women on a balcony overhanging the street, their skins as black as pitch, the jewelry hanging from their necks and ears as bright as flames against their dark colors. Dimity goggled at them until she bumped into a woman walking the other way, swathed head to foot and veiled in gray, with her children hanging from her hem. The children wore silk caftans in shades of indigo, lime green, and dusky red, as fine and pretty as butterfly wings. The veiled woman muttered something angrily, and her children giggled and smiled as they passed.

They turned a corner into a steep, cobbled street, and Charles turned his head to speak. “Watch your step, we’re close to the butchers here.” Puzzled, Dimity looked down instead of up, and saw a river of bright red blood running along the middle of the alleyway, bubbling and rippling over the cobblestones. Hurriedly, she stepped to one side of it, and watched as a single white feather traveled by like a tiny boat on a grim and visceral river.

“How many animals could contain that much blood?” she said.

“Many, many. But it’s bloody water, not all blood. The butchers sluice it out of their shops by the bucketful,” Charles told her. He looked at her briefly. “I can’t imagine a hunter like you is squeamish?”

“No, Mr. Aubrey,” she said, shaking her head, even though her knees were aching in an odd, sickly way. She liked him calling her a hunter. The smell of the blood was clinging and rich. She took another cautious step back from the flow and her heel caught on something, tripping her. She looked down into the slotted eye of a goat, and recoiled. There were hundreds of eyes, all staring and still. A pile of severed goat heads, trailing red from their necks; straight little teeth behind pulled-back lips. The old man behind this gruesome heap laughed at her, and Dimity hurried away after Charles, her stomach churning.

The place where they had lunch was not a restaurant as such, just a niche in the wall bordered by wooden shutters, where an old woman was stretching flatbreads and cooking them rapidly on an iron plate that smoked with heat. She filled them with handfuls of scrambled eggs and olives, and folded each one deftly before handing them to Charles. They sat on an ancient doorstep opposite the shop to eat, burning their lips on the hot bread and waving away a crowd of fat-bodied flies, metallic and blue, which buzzed around them. Without them even asking, a boy arrived with two glasses of tea, and Charles wiped his fingers on his trousers before taking them and handing the boy a coin in return. He seemed entirely at his ease, entirely used to the way of life that Dimity was finding so alien. She struggled not to show her amazement and to ignore the flat, curious stares she got from the Arab men as they passed. As if also suddenly noticing their attention, Charles gave her a quick smile.

“Don’t wander off on your own, will you, Mitzy? It’s probably quite safe, but it’s so easy to get lost in the old town. I did, on my first visit here. It took me four hours to find my way out! In the end I chose one pack mule and just followed it. Luckily, it led me to one of the gates, and I found my way from there. Best if you stick close to me, I think.”

“I will, I promise,” she said. Charles took another bite and chewed meditatively for a moment.

“There’s a piece coming to me. I can’t quite see it yet, and I think it might be desert, not city… we shall see. While you’re here you must see the tanning vats. They’re truly amazing. Not too soon after lunch, though, I think. They have a powerful aroma,” he said with a smile. Dimity nodded. She wanted to do all of it, everything Charles suggested she do.

Their mules had raw, pinkish leather saddles which gave off a meaty smell to blend with the reek of the animals themselves. Charles negotiated at length in French with the muleteer, eventually handing over some coins with the air of a man who knows he’s been robbed. Only once they were on and riding away did he wink at Dimity and whisper that he’d gotten them at a bargain. Dimity, who’d had no choice but to ruck her skirt up around her hips in order to sit astride her mule, was sweating under a blanket that had been provided for her to drape around her lower body for modesty’s sake. She tied it behind her waist, wearing it like a giant apron, and the coarse fabric made her knees itch. Within a few hundred yards, the press of the saddle into her seat bones was giving her a numbing pain, but her mule followed Charles’s with quiet obedience, and she would do just the same.

They rode for an hour or more, through the powerful heat of the afternoon, ever upwards onto a rocky hill north of the city. Ahead, Dimity could see the boxy, crenellated remains of buildings that she guessed to be their destination. Sweat trickled down her spine, and she wilted in the saddle, feeling the sun singe her face. Charles was wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and she wished she had something similar. Her hair clung to her scalp and the back of her neck, and she daydreamed about diving off the quay at Tangier and feeling the cool turquoise water close over her head. For a long time the only sound was the clatter of the mules’ hooves over rocks and pebbles on the ground, the creak of the saddles and the moaning of the breeze. Then, near the summit, they began to walk through a field of goat skins, stretched and pegged out to dry beneath the roasting sun. They had been dyed bright red, bright blue, bright green, and lay around on the rocky ground like petals dropped from some vast flower. Dimity stared at each one, astonished by the colors, as her mule picked its way around them.

When at last they arrived at the foot of a tall, tumbledown stone tomb, Charles dismounted and took a long pull from a bottle of water before handing it to Dimity.

“Oh, blast it-you’ve burned your face! Haven’t you got a hat?” he said. Dimity shook her head, which was aching, and did not care about her sunburn, because, as she drank from his bottle, her mouth was touching his. “Never mind, you can wear mine on the way back. Come and sit in the shade for a while.” It was only once Dimity had slithered stiffly from her mule to sit with her back to the crumbling stones that she understood why Charles had undertaken the hot and uncomfortable trek. The whole of Fez was laid out below them, and beyond it the plain and the rocky hills circled all around. The sun was dipping in the west, and everything was alight with an orange glow; the city walls seemed to flame. She gasped at the spectacle of it, and Charles smiled, also turning to look.

“You can understand why these ancient kings wanted this to be their final and everlasting view, can’t you?” he said softly. Dimity nodded. Below them, lights were starting to come on down in the medina, where the shade was deepest. They sparkled like fallen stars.

“I never imagined a place like this, in all the time I was in Blacknowle. It doesn’t seem fair that this should have existed all the while, yet I never knew of it.”

“There are a million more places besides, Mitzy. The more you travel, the more you will understand how vast the world truly is.”

“Will you take me to other places, then, Mr. Aubrey? Will you take me with you, when you go?” In the instant after she spoke these words, she could hardly believe she’d let them sound out loud. Charles said nothing for a long time, and Dimity’s heart curled in on itself, braced for a blow.

“I’ll do my best for you, Mitzy. Who knows which way life will take us?” he said at last. Dimity glanced at him as he gazed out over the city with the light of it shining in his eyes. Such an intent, faraway look; as though he was trying to stare into a future that neither of them could see. She blinked, and her heart uncurled itself. I’ll do my best for you, Mitzy. Suddenly all the vast promise of the world resounded in those words. For you, Mitzy. They sat for a long time while the sky overhead grew dimmer, blushing pink against the turquoise; a few wisps of high cloud glowed silver and gold. A heavenly scent surrounded them, and Dimity looked over her shoulder to see a jasmine plant scrambling along the broken wall of the tomb, arching over them like a wedding bower, to release its perfume.

Celeste and the girls were already at the riad when Charles and Dimity returned, parched and dusty, as true darkness began to fall. The three of them were in the courtyard; Celeste and Élodie curled together on a low couch while Delphine sat on the edge of the fountain, leaning over to watch the constant play of the water. Celeste looked up when Charles greeted her, and with a shock Dimity noticed how red and puffy her eyes were, how streaked and salty her face.

“My darling! Are you all right? What happened?” asked Charles, crossing to crouch down in front of her. His words, his posture, gave Dimity a nasty feeling. She hung back, skirted them, and went to sit near Delphine, who did not look up. As she passed, she felt Celeste’s eyes flicker up at her. She didn’t need to see her face to know what expression would be on it. That same hard look as when they had found her sitting in the kitchen at Littlecombe, with Charles’s picture of Dimity in her hand.

“I will tell you later. Where have you been? We were worried.” Celeste’s voice was hoarse.

“Just up to the tombs. I told you I wanted to go and see the view…”

“And you took Mitzy with you? I thought we decided we would all go up to the tombs tomorrow? Delphine wanted to…”

“Well, we can go again. You can take the girls, any time you want to. And of course I took Mitzy-she’d been here on her own all morning.”

“I am sure Mitzy can cope with being by herself for a little while,” said Celeste, her voice taking on a dangerous edge. Dimity didn’t dare look up, and, beside her, Delphine’s fingers, which had been stirring slow whirlpools, went still.

“It hardly seemed fair,” Charles said carefully.

“Our daughters might like to spend a little time with you too, Charles.”

“You took our daughters to see your family. Must the whole world wait and hold its breath until you return?” Charles said coldly. There was a loaded pause. Dimity looked up cautiously and saw the way the two of them glared at each other. Still nestled into her mother’s side, Élodie looked tense and unhappy.

“Girls. Go upstairs to your room,” said Celeste. Without hesitation, all three of them obeyed.

Their voices echoed up from the courtyard, and Dimity tried not to make it obvious that she wanted to listen. As if she could tell, Élodie sang a tuneless song about a frog, over and over again, so that her parents’ exact words were impossible to distinguish. From quiet to loud, from a whisper to an angry crescendo from Celeste, the argument churned on like a stormy sea. Delphine leaned out over the balcony, as if to put herself as far from it all as she could. Since she couldn’t hear what the fight was about, Dimity went over to join her. Delphine gave her a small, worried smile.

“They do this sometimes. But they always love each other again afterwards,” she said.

“Why are they arguing? It looked like your ma had been crying before.”

“She got upset at grandmère et grandpère’s house.”

“What about?”

“Well… her mother was so happy to see her. We had a lovely lunch there with her. She is Berber, but of course you know that. But when her father came home, he-”

“Delphine! You don’t have to tell her everything!” Élodie snapped, breaking off her song. In the quiet after she spoke, Charles’s voice rose from below:

“You’re being irrational. You always are when you’ve been home to your parents!”

“I have given up everything for you!” Celeste cried.

“But I have given you everything you wanted!” Charles countered. Quickly, Élodie resumed her singing.

“What did her father do?” Dimity asked.

“He… well, he’s French and he’s quite old. Mummy sometimes says he’s from another age, and she means he’s quite old-fashioned. But he won’t see her or speak to her, or to us, because…”

“Because they’re not married?”

“Yes.” The two girls looked out across the scattered city lights in silence for a while, listening as the words of Élodie’s song got tired and jumbled and began to descend into nonsense. Beneath it, the other voices seemed to have stopped, and as Élodie stumbled into silence, all three of them listened, ears tuned to the least noise. None came, and after thirty seconds Delphine exhaled, her shoulders slumping. “There. Over,” she said with quiet relief.

“Why haven’t they got married?” Dimity asked.

“God, Mitzy, you’re such a nosy parker!” said Élodie, and though even Dimity agreed with her this time, she still needed to know.

“Daddy won’t. He can’t because-”

“Delphine! You know you’re not supposed to say!” Élodie cried.

“I won’t tell,” said Dimity, but Delphine bit her lip, shook her head.

“I can’t say, but he has a good reason why he can’t. She doesn’t mind most of the time. It’s only because of the way her father treats her now. He won’t… he won’t even let her into the house. He was so angry when he came home today and saw her, but you can see it hurts him, too. It was horrible. Straight away he demanded to see her hand, and when he saw that there was no ring on her finger, that was it. He said she had to leave. Poor Mummy! She loves her father very much.” Delphine spoke with a kind of gentle desperation, but Dimity hardly heard her. Her mind was racing, picking at the threads of what had been said; picturing the way Celeste had looked at her downstairs, the way Élodie had prevented her sister from telling her the whole story. She started to guess at why Charles would not marry Celeste, and the answer she came up with made joy blaze through her like the sun rising.

The following day, Celeste beckoned Dimity into her room and opened up a canvas bag on the bed. The bag was full of clothes.

“These were mine when I was growing up. I thought they might fit you. I fetched them yesterday from my parents’ house… they will be better for you to wear while you’re here.” She pulled a few items out and handed them to Dimity. Her eyes were no longer swollen, but her face still seemed heavy with sadness. Her hair, hanging straight around her face, was tangled. “Well? Would you like to wear them or not?”

“Yes please, Celeste. Thank you,” said Dimity meekly, rolling the clothes she’d been handed into a bundle. The cottons were soft and light.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Go and try them on!” Celeste snapped. For a second her eyes lit with anger, but then sadness filled them again. “Sorry, Mitzy. I am not angry with you… It’s not your fault that… you are here. I am angry with… men. The men in my life! The rules they design for us, to have a stick with which to beat us. Go; go on. Try the clothes. The trousers go on first, underneath the long tunic.” She waved her hand at Dimity and turned back to the canvas bag, lifting out more clothes and laying them in matching piles.

In her own room, and with Delphine’s help, Dimity put on baggy trousers with a string-tie at the waist and buttoned cuffs at the ankles, a lightweight undershirt, and a long, open tunic with swinging sleeves, which was belted around her ribs with a wide sash. It was very similar to the robes she often saw Celeste wearing in Blacknowle, but on her own body the outfit felt alien and unusual. She twirled, and watched the way the long swath of fabric swirled out around her. It was a deep shade of violet and had embroidery around the neckline; so weightless compared to the heavy fabric of her felt skirt that she could hardly feel it. It was finer than anything she had ever worn before. She slipped her feet into her shoes, and Delphine laughed.

“Do I look silly?” said Dimity.

“You look lovely, but… you can’t wear those heavy old shoes with it! They look daft. Here-borrow my sandals until you have some of your own. You look like a proper Moroccan lady now. Doesn’t she, Élodie?” Delphine looked at her little sister, who was scowling with fury, and Dimity took that to mean that the outfit suited her well.

“She’s not Moroccan, though-we’re more Moroccan than she is! I want to wear a caftan. I’m going to tell Mummy!” Élodie stamped her foot and stormed from the room.

“Oh, do grow up, Élodie!” Delphine called after her; then she looked at Dimity and they laughed. “The boy who lives here will fall over backwards when he sees you,” said Delphine. But Dimity didn’t care about him in the slightest. She looked down at the brightly colored fabric wrapped around her body and wanted to know if Charles would like it.

Feeling nervous and proud, Dimity went downstairs with the girls to find Charles and Celeste waiting on one of the couches in the courtyard.

“Well? What do you think of our Moroccan Mitzy?” said Delphine, gently pushing her into a twirl. She ran her hands nervously over the bright fabric, fitting it to the contours of her body. Charles approved, she could tell. His eyes widened slightly at first, and then narrowed in thought, and he tipped his head to one side when he looked at her, so she knew he was almost ready to draw, or to paint. Celeste gave her a steady stare, her expression hard to read, but when Dimity crossed to sit near to her, she noticed that Celeste’s body was rigid, trembling ever so slightly; her nostrils had tiny pale crescents in them, where even they were held stiff, flared, fixed.

“How old are you now, Mitzy?” she asked quietly.

“I was sixteen over the winter, I think.”

“You think?”

“Ma never… Ma’s never been too clear on which year I was born, but I’ve been able to guess it, kind of.”

“Truly a woman now, then, and old enough to wed,” said Celeste, still with that same preternatural stillness to her that was making Dimity deeply uneasy. She was relieved when Élodie, ever hungry, roused them all to go in search of lunch.

In the following weeks Charles sketched Dimity many times, as though seeing her in Moroccan costume was all he had needed to make the images in his head coalesce. He painted her in shifting watercolors, a medium he rarely used, sitting by a well beneath one of the city gates, a well which was said to have healing powers and could cure any woman of an aching back. He sketched her in oils, drawing water from one of the ornately tiled drinking fountains in the city, or sipping from her cupped hands with the swinging sleeves of her caftan pushed back to keep them dry. At the Merenid Tombs again, this time with Celeste and the girls as well, he drew her half hidden by the decaying stonework, with the wide vista from that vantage point laid out in front of her. And each time she posed for him, Dimity felt every stroke of the pen or the brush or the graphite, as though it were his hands, not his eyes, that moved over her in constant appraisal. She shivered at it, felt her skin go cold and yet burn at every imagined touch of his fingers. Twice, three times he had to ask her to open her eyes, because she had shut them unconsciously, turning all her attention inward to focus on the ecstasy of the feeling.

But Celeste did not smile, if she happened to see; she looked serious, and questioning, as though she could read Dimity, and had suspicions about what made her close her eyes like that. When Charles talked to them about the piece he was planning, a Berber market scene with one young maiden as the symbol of all that could be lovely in a barren landscape, Celeste suggested that he had two genuine Berber maidens and one Berber mistress to choose from for the picture. Dimity felt anxious for a moment, but Charles merely shrugged and said absently: “I see Mitzy for it. She’s the perfect age.” Perfect, perfect… The word sung gladly in her ears.

“Delphine is not even two years younger, and is just as tall,” Celeste pointed out.

“But Delphine does not have Mitzy’s…” He trailed off uncomfortably.

“Mitzy’s what?” said Celeste, in a dangerous tone of voice.

“Never mind.”

“What, Charles? Tell me. Tell me what it is that fascinates you so, that you must put her face in every picture, and your daughters’, your mistress’s, in none?” Celeste leaned towards him and stared intently into his eyes. Dimity was glad that Delphine and Élodie were a good way off and would not hear. Her own cheeks blazed, and she kept her eyes down, hoping to escape Celeste’s attention.

“There’s nothing in it, Celeste. It is only a matter of her age, and the propriety of using one’s own child to model for a celebration of nubile beauty-”

“I see. So I am not young enough, and Delphine is not beautiful enough. You are honest, even if you are not loyal,” she snapped, rising to her feet and glaring savagely at Charles. Dimity snatched a glance at her, but averted it at once when the Moroccan woman’s eyes turned to alight on her. There was a dreadful pause, and then relief as Celeste stalked away without another word, and Dimity let the pleasure of hearing Charles talk of her beauty echo in her head.

For ten days they took outings together, fitting them in around Charles’s spasms of creativity. Dimity noticed that Celeste chose to walk close to her daughters, rather than with her or Charles, and she was happy with that arrangement. They visited El Attarine, the sprawling thatched souk in the center of the city, where anything under the sun was available to buy if you knew where to go within the cramped plethora of shops. They climbed the stairs of a house, tipping the elderly man who lived there a few coins, and walked out onto his roof to see the tanning and dyeing vats laid out below; row upon row of white clay pits, full of stinking hides and tanning solution or the wild, rainbow colors of the dyes. They saw blue and white pottery and tiles being made and painted and fired; and once, by mistake, they saw a small brown goat hung up by its back legs, kicking desperately as its throat was cut. From another vantage point, they gazed upon the jade-green tower of the Karaouine Mosque, and the array of mosaicked university buildings and sacred courtyards surrounding it, forbidden to infidel feet.

“What would happen if a Christian were to go inside?” asked Dimity, in awe of the beauty and grandeur of the place.

“I think it might be best not to find out,” said Charles.

“It’s so beautiful and perfect… and yet so many of the other nice buildings in the city are being left to fall to pieces,” said Delphine. Celeste put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Moroccans are a nomad people. Berbers and Arabs both. We may build homes for ourselves from stone and brick these days, but still we think of them as tents. As though they are temporary, not permanent,” she said.

“Well, there’s no surer way to make a building temporary than to neglect it, I suppose,” said Charles, grinning at Celeste to show he was joking. She didn’t smile back at him, and his grin faded to nothing.

At dinner that night talk turned to the end of the trip, and a return to Blacknowle before the summer was spent. Celeste fixed Charles with steady, unforgiving eyes.

“I could stay here forever. But we are at your disposal, as ever. As I choose to be,” she said flatly.

“Please, Celeste. Don’t be that way,” said Charles, taking her hand.

“I am as I am. Feelings do not go away.” She shrugged. “Life would be simpler sometimes if they would.” She gazed at him without rancor, but with such strength of feeling that he looked away and said nothing for a while. Dimity sat in the heat of the night and felt herself burn, as if all her pent-up thoughts would ignite. No. The word scorched her silent tongue. She wanted the trip to last forever-not a trip at all but a new life, a new reality. In this place, where she could sit for Charles every day and nobody whispered or called her names; and there was no Valentina, all pinched with spite, demanding she ask for money; where food was brought to her by black-eyed young men, and she did not have to hunt for it, or find it in a drenched hedgerow; skin or pluck or cook it herself; where she could wear colors as bright as the bougainvillea flowers and the tiles on the walls and the roofs of the holy buildings, clothes that swung and floated around her like royal finery; where she lived in a house with a fountain at its heart and a hot sky instead of a ceiling. Morocco was a place of dreams, and she never wanted to wake up.

The next day, Celeste took her daughters and went again to visit her mother. Dimity tried not to let her excitement show; tried not to let them see how happy she was to be left alone with Charles. She felt elated, and dreaded that Celeste would be able to see it. Celeste turned at the door and gave them both a steady look, but she said nothing. Charles seemed distracted, and he frowned as they set off into the city, his art materials in a leather satchel over his shoulder. He walked quickly, striding ahead so that Dimity struggled to keep up. She kept her eyes on his back, and watched as a dark fan of sweat spread slowly through his shirt. After a while, it seemed as though he was running from her, trying to leave her behind, and she hurried on, feeling a rising desperation that she couldn’t quite define. Desperate to be kept, and not abandoned. Desperate to be loved, and drawn, and wanted. Her heart was full of him; the words he had said to her sang like prayers in her mind. I’ll do my best for you, Mitzy. She is perfect. Had he said that? Called her perfect? She was sure he had. Who knows which way life will take us? And how he had looked after he said that, how deep in thought, lost in imagining; clearly the future he saw was different from the present. And he would not marry Celeste; he had good reason not to. A reason the girls weren’t allowed to tell her. A reason that was her? Perfect. For you, Mitzy. The new swan turned out to be the most beautiful of them all.

Soon they were out of the city’s bustling heart and on quiet streets running between clustered houses. Dimity was fighting for breath and her legs felt heavier with every step. She realized that their path had turned uphill, and felt a trickle of sweat run down her own spine. They must have walked right across town and been climbing out of the valley, a long, long way from the guesthouse. The sun was rising to its highest point, sharp as a knife. They came to a place where the walls on either side of the alley were no more than two feet apart, and the shadow pooling between them was cool and deep. Unable to go on at such a pace, Dimity gave up and leaned back on the wall for a moment to catch her breath. Realizing that her footsteps had ceased, Charles looked back at her. He still wore the same distracted frown.

“You need a rest, yes, of course,” he said. “Thoughtless of me.” He came to stand opposite her, lit a cigarette, and took a long pull.

“You’re never thoughtless,” said Dimity. Charles smiled.

“You must be the only person who thinks that, and I fear you’re being more loyal than truthful. The people close to an artist often lose out to the art itself. It’s unavoidable. Sometimes there just isn’t enough room in my thoughts for everybody.”

“We all need time to ourselves. Time to breathe, and be left alone. Or we’d forget who we really are.”

“Yes! Exactly that. Time to breathe. Mitzy, you are a surprising girl sometimes. One could take you for the most untutored naïf, and then you come out with a simple truth that cuts to the core of human nature… Remarkable.” He shook his head, and drew again on his cigarette. Dimity smiled.

“Are you going to draw today?” she said.

“I don’t know. I wanted to, but… Celeste…” He shook his head. “She is a force of nature, that woman. When she is stormy, it’s hard to find calm.”

“Yes,” Dimity agreed.

She watched the pursing of his lips on his cigarette, the movement of his throat, the way he narrowed his eyes against the smoke. They stood facing each other, just a few inches apart; nothing between them but the warm, shady air. That space seemed to pull at Dimity, seemed to urge her nearer to him. Charles looked at her and smiled, and she stepped forwards, helplessly. She was no more than a hand’s width from him, and the closer she got the more she knew that she needed this to live. Needed the touch of his body, his skin; needed to taste him, to be consumed by him. A craving she couldn’t withstand for another second.

“Mitzy…” said Charles. There was a tiny furrow on his forehead, and in it she saw the echo of her own need, the strain of resisting what was pulling at them. She stepped forwards again, so that her body was touching his. Her breasts, her stomach, her hips and thighs; she shivered, felt the yearning grow even stronger, even more urgent. With shaking fingers she grasped his hand, put it on her waist, and left it there, warm, solid. She felt his fingers move, tightening slightly, and looked up to find him staring at her. “Mitzy,” he said again, softly now. She tilted up her chin, but given the difference in their heights, she could go no closer to him than this; nestled herself tighter to him. She shut her eyes and then felt his mouth against hers; soft, scented with smoke, the rough brush of whiskers on his top lip so unexpected, so unlike Wilf Coulson’s kiss. She felt the lightest touch of his tongue, the wet tip of it, brushing hers. Against her pelvis, he grew hard and swollen, and for a hung moment he leaned into her, reached his hands around her waist and pulled her tighter. The feeling was like her heart exploding; an unbearable ache of joy. Then his kiss vanished, and he pushed her away so abruptly that she stumbled back and hit the wall with a thump.

Dimity blinked rapidly, her desire disorienting her.

“No, Mitzy!” Charles raked his hands through his hair, then put one of them across his mouth and looked at her, turning his body awkwardly to the side. Desperately she reached out for him again, but he clasped her fingers and held them away. “Stop. You’re just a child…”

“I’m not a child. And I love you…”

“You don’t… you don’t know about love yet. How could you? It’s a crush, nothing more. I should have seen it before now… Celeste did warn me. I’m sorry, Mitzy. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“But you did!” Tears choked her. “Why did you kiss me, if you didn’t want to?”

“I-” Charles broke off and looked away again. His cheeks were flushed. “Sometimes it’s very hard for a man to resist.”

“I know you want me… I felt it.” Her tears were making her nose run, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care; she could only try to think of ways to convince him, ways to feel again the bliss of kissing him.

“Dimity, please, stop now! It shouldn’t have happened and it mustn’t again. We can’t… we can’t just take what we want, when we want it. It’s a cruel fact of life, but a fact nonetheless. It would be wrong, and I am not free to… Celeste and I…”

“I’d never tell, I swear it. Please, I do love you. I want to kiss you again; I want to please you…”

“Enough!” He slapped her reaching hands away. His teeth were gritted together and his nostrils flared, and she saw some great conflict within him, and prayed that he would lose. But he did not. He folded his arms and took a deep breath, blowing it out through his cheeks. “Come now, let’s go on, and talk no more about it. Someday soon you’ll make some young lad very happy, and be a lovely wife to him. But it cannot be me, Mitzy. Put it out of your mind now.” He walked away along the alleyway, and it was some moments before Dimity could find her feet to follow. She ran her tongue over her lips to pick up every last trace of him, and inside her head she was numb and disheveled, as though his kiss had shaken up the right order of her thoughts and made a blizzard of them.

The next day she awoke feeling dizzy and weak. She lay with the mattress pressing into her sweaty back and couldn’t think of rising, or of breakfast. Delphine fussed around her for a while, and brought her water while Élodie watched from the doorway, flatly curious and unwilling to help. When Delphine had gone, she walked over to Dimity, looked down at her.

“If you think by playing sick you’ll get to spend the day with Daddy again instead of with us, then you’re quite wrong. He’s gone off already, to meet with an artist friend who arrived in Fez last night. So you’ll be stuck here on your own all day,” she said coolly. Dimity stared at her, and Élodie stared back, and did not blink. Even if Dimity hadn’t been feeling as ill as she was, she would not have given this dark, perceptive child the satisfaction of seeing her slough off a ruse and get up. In the glance they exchanged was all the power Élodie now had, in guessing Dimity’s heart, and all the will with which Dimity would resist her. Eventually Élodie smiled, as though she had won, turned, and walked back to the doorway. “Everybody knows, you know. You’re so obvious about it,” she said, in parting. Dimity lay very still, and felt sicker than ever. The world seemed to tip, throwing her off balance; she had to hang on tight not to fall.

She lay in a trance for some hours; then, unsteadily, she got dressed and went onto the inner terrace to look down into the courtyard. There was no sign of anybody. She walked along the hall to Charles’s and Celeste’s room, listened for a moment, and then knocked softly. There was no reply, no sound of movement. She knocked again, louder, and still there was nothing. Her throat was parched and had a tight, raw feeling. Turning away, she paused, then, in a heartbeat, without thought, she had opened their door and gone inside. The shutters were closed to keep the room cool during the heat of the day, and in the dim light creeping through Dimity looked around, taking in the clothes and shoes lying about; Charles’s stack of drawings and small canvases, his books and boxes of pencils and brushes. She stood at the foot of the bed and tried to tell which side Celeste slept on, and which side Charles. The pillows still bore the slight indentations of their heads, and she found a long black hair on one, so she crossed to the other and ran her fingers lightly over the place where his head had lain. Slowly she knelt down and lowered her face, inhaled in search of the scent of him. But the dye on the striped fabric was too strong, and was all she could smell. She tried to imagine what Charles would look like in sleep, and realized that she had never seen him like that. Never seen his face soft and vulnerable in repose; the flicker of dreams playing with his eyes behind their lids; the steady, regular depth of unconscious breathing. Imagining it gave her a pulling sensation, like something tearing softly inside her. She swam in the heavenly memory of his kiss, emblazoned across her mind.

In one corner of the room was a wooden table with a mirror on top and a small upholstered stool in front of it. Celeste had been using this as a dressing table, and its top was covered with her jewelry and hairbrushes, pots of face cream and powder. In a small, tightly lidded box was a soft plastic cup, the size of an eggcup meant for a bantam’s egg. Its base was rounded so it wouldn’t stand up, and Dimity stared at it for a minute, trying to think what it could be for. Eventually she set it aside and picked up some of Celeste’s silver earrings, long ones with turquoise beads; she held them up to her ears, then fitted them to the lobes, screwing the backs tight to secure them. She gathered her hair into a knot behind her head to see the effect better, the way the beads swung around her jawline. Her pulse raced along with the guilt and temerity of trespass. There were necklaces, too. She picked up her favorite, the one Celeste wore only in the evening, for dinner. A twisted rope of black and gray freshwater pearls, their luster like the sheen on the Berber woman’s skin, gleaming in the light from a candle flame. Dimity tugged the neckline of her caftan further open, so that the pearls would sit, cool and heavy, against her own skin. There was an ornate carved wooden screen next to the dressing table, and Celeste had draped her chemise and several other items over it-the scarves she sometimes wore around her hair or her waist; the belts and sashes that fastened her robes. Dimity chose one carefully: a gauzy, diaphanous veil of pale cream silk with tiny silver coins sewn along the edges. She draped it over her head so that it covered her hair and studied the effect in the mirror. In caftan, jewels, and veil, she hardly knew herself. Hazel eyes lined with thick, dark brown lashes, clear skin, the shadows under her eyes from her restless sleep only seeming to add an extra delicacy, a vulnerability.

She stared at her softly lit reflection for a long time. She stared into the eyes of a young woman, a beauty, a mistress covered in the gifts of a lover.

“I am Dimity Hatcher,” she said quietly, watching the way her lips moved, how full and soft they looked. She pictured Charles’s lips touching them, imagined how they had felt to him. Her pulse beat between her thighs. “I am Dimity Hatcher,” she said again. Then: “I, Dimity Hatcher.” She paused, pulled the pale scarf a little lower over her brow, like a bride. The silver coins glinted. “I, Dimity Hatcher, take thee, Charles Henry Aubrey…” Her throat stung as she said the words aloud, and when she heard them her heart thumped so hard that it shook her. She cleared her throat carefully, and spoke a little louder. “I, Dimity Hatcher, take thee, Charles Henry Aubrey, to be my wedded husband…” There was a sharp gasp from behind her, and in dismay Dimity moved her eyes across the mirror and saw the reflection of Celeste, standing in the doorway.

There was a dreadful, electric pause as their eyes met; a frozen moment in which Dimity felt the blood drain from her face. Celeste’s mouth hung a little open; her eyes went so wide that the whites gleamed. “I was only-” Dimity started to say, but Celeste cut her off.

“Take off my things,” she whispered. Her voice was colder than midwinter. “Take them off. Now.” With shaking hands, Dimity struggled to comply, but she was not fast enough. In three quick strides Celeste was upon her, pulling the scarf from her head so roughly that it took a clump of hair with it, fumbling at the clasp of the necklace, tugging at it so that it cut into the skin of Dimity’s neck.

“Celeste, please! Don’t-you’ll break it!” she cried, but Celeste’s face was alight with a fury she had never seen before, and she would not stop until the necklace came free. It snapped and flew apart, the pearls hitting the floor like hailstones.

“How dare you? How dare you?” she spat. “Coucou! Coucou dans le nid! You are a cuckoo child!”

“I didn’t mean anything by it!” Dimity cried, tears of fear blurring her eyes. Celeste grabbed her by the wrist with a grip like a vise and put her face so close to Dimity’s that she could feel the woman’s breath, feverishly hot.

“Don’t you lie to me, Mitzy Hatcher! Don’t you dare lie to me! Have you fucked him? Have you? Tell me!”

“No! I promise, I haven’t-” Without warning, Celeste slapped her hard across the face, flat-handed but with the full swing of her arm. Dimity had no time to brace herself and was flung from the stool, which clattered onto its side. She hit her head on the edge of the table and felt an explosion of tingling pain. She put her hands over her face and started sobbing.

“Liar!” Celeste screamed. “Oh, I am a fool. How big a fool you must think me! Now, get up. Get up!”

“Leave me alone!” Dimity cried.

“Leave you alone? Leave you to watch him and covet him and tempt him away? Leave you to steal everything that is dear to me? No, I won’t. Get up,” Celeste ordered again, and her voice was so dreadful that Dimity didn’t dare disobey. She scrambled to her feet and backed away from the woman. Celeste was shaking from head to foot; her fists were clenched and her stare was like a thunderstorm.

“Now go! Get out of my sight-I cannot look at you! Get out!” she shouted. Blindly, Dimity fled. She stumbled down the stairs, almost falling; wrenched open the huge door and ran away down the dusty street, not daring to look back. In seconds, the city had enveloped her, drawing her onwards, deep into its twisted heart.