A glance over his shoulder tells him al-Annuri’s watchman is observing the proceedings from the shelter of the last house in the street, squatting nonchalantly against its earthen wall as though he has all the time in the world. Nicholas thinks: Robert Cecil’s watchers could learn a trick or two from you, when it comes to brazenness.
Within minutes Hadir has acquired a cook, a boy to fetch water and a girl of no more than ten to do the infidel’s washing. The cook is an ancient woman with wise eyes and a smile that all the years of a female Methuselah has not managed to dim. She grins at him maternally. The two children regard him with eyes the size of Cecil’s Portuguese ducats. As Hadir moves on to the next group, Nicholas realizes that if he doesn’t call a halt, Adolfo Sykes’s former house on the Street of the Weavers will have more servants in it than Greenwich Palace.
‘My needs are simple enough, Hadir. Let’s not trouble these people any longer.’
‘But you are ambassador of English queen!’ Hadir cries, like a hungry man dragged away from a feast.
‘I’m not an ambassador; I’m a physician. This will do.’
With his newly acquired household in tow, Nicholas heads back towards the house. As he passes al-Annuri’s watchman, he says cheerily, though without any expectation of being understood, save by his smile, ‘Good morrow, sirrah. I hope you slept well last night, under your tree. I’ll ask Hadir to send you and your companion some breakfast.’
The man does not react. He stares clear through Nicholas, as though his eyes have been put out. But no sooner has Nicholas passed by than he’s padding along in the wake of the man he’s pretended not to see.
The sound of the altercation becomes audible long before Nicholas reaches the house. Not so much an altercation, he thinks, as the sound of an angry schoolmaster berating a lazy pupil.
Beneath the date palm that has become their sentry post, the second of al-Annuri’s watchmen is standing, head bowed, before a rotund little man in a brightly striped robe. The man is in full flood. His raised voice has a high-pitched sweetness about it, quite at odds with the invective it delivers, punctuated by aggressive stabs of a chubby forefinger.
The guard is taking this tirade without protest, even though he’s a head taller than his tormentor and half his age. Close by, a younger man in a plain cloth robe, his bald head gleaming in the sunlight, looks on with amused interest.
As Nicholas approaches, the little man turns towards him. The invective stops in mid-sentence. The face softens. He becomes a wholly different character altogether: smiling, avuncular, a soul whose sparkling brown eyes hold malice towards no one.
‘At last, the esteemed English physician returns from his first adventures in our noble city,’ he says in his high, dancing voice. A flick of his fleshy hand, a sudden, short reversion to his former angry self, and al-Annuri’s guard slinks away to join his companion, who has stopped a little way down the lane. Their brief exchange reminds Nicholas of a pair of troublemakers who’ve just been thrown out of the Jackdaw by Ned Monkton. They seem to be debating whether to go back and try their luck with their fists. But then they appear to think better of it, setting off in the direction of the Berber encampment with the edgy swagger of the publicly defeated.
The little man fixes Nicholas with a benevolent smile that fractures his curly white beard like a fall of sunlight on snow. ‘And I am Sumayl al-Seddik, minister to His Majesty Ahmad al-Mansur, beloved of Allāh, conqueror of the Songhai, lion of Timbuktu. I am charged by him to bring you greetings.’ He extends a plump little hand for Nicholas to shake. ‘I must ask your forgiveness for the insult,’ he says, nodding towards the departing guards. ‘That desert scorpion al-Annuri has no honour – that he should set watchdogs on our foreign guests as though they were nothing but bandits and thieves!’
‘In truth, sir, I felt a little sorry for them – having to follow me around and sleep under a date palm.’
‘They are nothing. Less than the dirt beneath your shoes. Al-Annuri is a dog. He knows only how to make people fear his bite.’
Remembering how Hadir’s hands had trembled when al-Annuri appeared in the garden beside the walls, Nicholas says, ‘I don’t want them punished, sir. I was becoming a little fond of them.’
Al-Seddik finds this amusing. ‘I’d forgotten how sentimental the English can be. Fear not. They will know how to bear it. A mule cannot live long if he does not become accustomed to the cane.’ His eyes observe Nicholas with interest. ‘So, you are the English man who has come to study medicine in our land? I hear of your arrival from the governor of Safi.’
‘I am, sir,’ says Nicholas. ‘My name is Dr Nicholas Shelby. I carry a letter for you, from Lord Burghley, who wishes to be remembered to you. I am here by command of his son, Sir Robert Cecil.’
‘So the queen has knighted him at last,’ says al-Seddik with a chuckle. ‘I trust that made him happy.’ He indicates the man beside him. ‘And this splendid gentleman is Dr Arnoult de Lisle. He is privileged to hold the position of physician to His Majesty. We thought we should both come to bid you welcome.’
De Lisle offers a reserved nod in lieu of a greeting. With his skin burned a dark brown, he could easily pass for a Moor. His iron-grey beard, cut close, adds a bladed edge to a face that has a keen intelligence about it, bordering on the haughty. He seems like a man not overly given to the tolerance of slower minds. Nicholas puts him in his late thirties.
‘I’m honoured by your presence, Masters,’ Nicholas says in what he hopes is a suitably deferential tone for a newly arrived envoy.
‘Professor de Lisle is reader in Arabic at the Collège de France, appointed by King Henri himself,’ al-Seddik says with a gracious nod to the younger man. ‘He is also one of his nation’s finest physicians. He speaks our language as if it were his own. And English, too. We are fortunate to have him in our humble land.’
De Lisle gives the merest wince of a smile, as if to show humility in the face of undeserved abundance. As he reaches out to shake Nicholas’s hand, the robe slips from his wrist. Heavy gold bracelets, Nicholas notices. De Lisle had done well in the sultan’s service, it seems.
‘This letter, from milord Burghley: may I see it?’ says al-Seddik.
Nicholas hesitates. What is the protocol for playing host to a sultan’s minister – or a sultan’s physician, for that matter? He adds the question to the growing list of things that Robert Cecil has failed to tell him.
Hadir comes to his rescue. Within what seems like moments, Nicholas is sitting on the cushions on the roof terrace while Hadir pours atay for the guests. The Methuselah woman from the Berber encampment serves the dates and nuts left over from breakfast.
‘You have the gauge of us already, Dr Shelby,’ al-Seddik says admiringly. ‘We are simple folk and are at our most contented with simple pleasures.’
A glance across the roof at the magnificence of the sultan’s palace tells Nicholas that al-Mansur’s minister, for all his avuncular charm, is being disingenuous.
‘I have to compliment you on your command of my language, sir,’ Nicholas says. ‘It is a great comfort to a stranger in your land. Did you acquire it while you were in England, with His Majesty’s envoy?’
‘I had a little of before I went, from the English merchants here in Marrakech, and from Dr de Lisle. But I’m an inquisitive fellow, and our delegation went to your London playhouses more than once.’ Al-Seddik smiles at the memory. ‘An extraordinary affair – to see young boys pretending to be females, and weak men with proud bellies taking the parts of heroes. How you English contrive to deceive each other!’