CHAPTER 21
Somewhere between shutting her eyes and opening them again on the new day, Cass had changed her mind and decided that instead of trying to find her way home by herself, she would to return to the Zetetic Society. They were offering help, after all, and help was what she needed right now. If they could describe for her what was happening and how it worked-well, that was well worth hanging around an extra day to find out. While she still had no intention of joining them, or getting mixed up in their mysterious machinations, whatever they were, simply getting a few answers to some questions- like: what was the best and quickest way home-would be no bad thing.
That decided, Cassandra shared a noisy breakfast with the nuns and orphans of Saint Tekla’s and helped with clearing and washing the dishes. Then, free to follow her bliss for the day, she started off for her visit to the society. At the convent gate, one of the sisters approached with a thin cotton robe of drab green. “Pour vous, mon amie,” she said, holding out the garment.
“For me?” wondered Cass. “But-”
“ S ’il vous plait,” insisted the nun. “C’est mieux, ma soeur.” She pointed to Cass’s clothes and held out the gown for her to put on. It came to Cass that it was the same kind of drab robe she had seen on women going into the bazaar-less than a burka, but more than a housedress- that would, in her case, be useful for keeping her modern dress covered. She understood then that the sisters, having noticed her odd garb, were trying to protect her from difficulty.
“Merci,” said Cass, accepting the robe. She allowed the nun to help her into it. “ Cella-la est bonne, ma soeur. Merci.”
Smiling, the nun also arranged Cass’s cotton scarf into a more convincing head covering, then opened the gate for her. “Bonne journee.”
Cass wished her a good day and, stepping through the gate and into the street beyond the walls, made her way back to the society’s black lacquered door. She knocked once, waited, then knocked again. When there was no answer, she knocked a third time and waited some more. Still too early, she thought, and deciding to try again later, she spun on her heel and started off to explore a little more of Damascus. Deep in thought, she reached the end of the lane and rounded the corner onto the busy main street-where she collided heavily with a tall, thin man in a three-piece suit of pale cream linen topped off with a natty white panama hat.
Cass was thrown backward into the road. The man hooked her elbow to keep her from falling.
“Steady there.” He helped her to right herself, then moved back a step and regarded her with the disinterested concern of a stranger. “Are you quite all right, miss?”
“Yes-fine,” she said, embarrassed. “Very sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
He glanced beyond her in the direction from which she had come. “You’ve been to the society.”
“I have. Yes,” she said as if this explained everything. She made to edge past him and move on.
“Rosemary said there was someone yesterday. Was that, by chance, you?” He spoke matter-of-factly, and Cass placed a soft Irish accent.
“I suppose it was,” she allowed. “Are you one of them?”
He chuckled. “We’re not as bad as all that, I hope.” Before Cass could draw breath to apologise, the thin man smiled and offered his hand. “Brendan Hanno at your service,” he said, his light Irish burr going down like butter. She took the offered hand and clasped it diffidently. “And you are?” he asked.
“My name is Cassandra.”
“Yes,” he replied pleasantly. “I expect it would be. I was on my way to the society just now. Would you like to accompany me? We can have a cup of tea and see if we can find answers to all your questions.” He gestured towards the lane. “Shall we?”
Cass fell into step beside him. “How do you know I have questions?”
“Everyone who comes to us has questions,” he observed mildly. “I have a few myself-such as, how do you find Damascus?”
“It’s nice,” replied Cass lamely. “I’ve never seen any place like it. Then again, I’ve only been here a day, and I haven’t seen very much.”
“Well, we must do something about that,” he said. “To know Syria is to love Syria.”
They reached the society entrance, and Brendan fumbled a key out of his pocket and into the lock, opened the door, and beckoned her in, snapping on electric lights as he went. From somewhere they could hear a warbly humming. “That will be Mrs. Peelstick making tea. We live on tea, it seems. Take a seat, and I will tell her we’re here.”
Cass sat down in one of the damask-covered overstuffed chairs and took in the room once more-the shelves of books, the old-fashioned sitting room furniture, the dusty windows barred to the street.
A moment later Brendan poked his head back into the room to announce that they would take their refreshment in the courtyard. “This way, please. It is far more pleasant outside.”
He led her along a high-ceilinged corridor to a door that opened onto a commodious enclosed courtyard of the distinctive black-andwhite-banded stone. The square, paved yard was open to the sky, but half shaded by a striped canvas awning. The air was cool and fresh and alive with the gentle tinkling splash of a small octagonal fountain standing in the centre of the courtyard; the bowl of the fountain was covered in a blanket of red rose petals floating on the surface of the water. A tall potted palm stood in a large terracotta pot in one corner, and in another stood a round teak table beneath a square blue umbrella.
“It is so very pleasant this time of day,” Brendan observed, waving Cass to a seat. Presently the woman from the day before appeared with a tray full of tea things. “I think you have met Mrs. Peelstick,” announced Brendan.
“Yes, good morning, Mrs. Peelstick,” replied Cass.
“Please, call me Rosemary.”
“Rosemary, then. I am sorry if yesterday I seemed somewhat… brittle. I am still a bit uncertain about all this.”
“Understandable, dear,” replied the woman. “Think nothing of it.”
“Rosemary has been with the society since its inception,” explained Brendan with a teasing smile.
“Nonsense!” scoffed the woman lightly. “Not by a long chalk.” She bent to the teapot and began the ritual of pouring black tea into glasses containing fresh mint leaves. Passing a glass to Cass, she said, “I want you to know that you are among friends. From now on we will treat one another like the friends we hope to become.”
“In short,” continued Brendan, completing the thought, “we will speak frankly.”
“Please,” replied Cass, taking a sip of hot minty tea. “I welcome it.”
The sun was warm, and the palm fronds rustled gently in the light breeze. Small white butterflies flitted here and there among the jasmine strands growing up the courtyard wall. Cass felt the anxiety and trepidation that had marked her first visit melting away. Inexplicably, everything seemed right and in order; all was as it should be- although nothing much, really, had changed at all.
They drank their tea, and Cass listened to the Irishman talk about the courtyard and the building the society maintained and how they had come to own it. He described what it was like to live in Damascus-a place that, as he said, “In the immortal words of Mark Twain, measured time not in hours or days or even years, but in empires that arose and flourished and crumbled to dust.”
Finally they came back around to the reason for Cassandra’s visit. “We know you are a traveller,” Mrs. Peelstick said, “a traveller for whom time and space are little impediment. Otherwise, you would not be here. That is a fact. It is also a fact that there are only two ways to become such a traveller: either you are initiated by another traveller, or you are simply born with the ability-passed on, perhaps, genetically. The former is the usual way; the latter is more rarely the case.”
Brendan, nodding slowly, added, “One means confers no great benefit over the other, although those born with the ability to leap from one dimensional reality to another may be physically more sensitive to the active mechanisms involved.” He fixed her with a quizzical expression. “Which sort of traveller are you, Cassandra?”
“So far as I know,” she answered thoughtfully, “no one in my family has ever experienced anything like this. I think I would have heard about it if they had. I guess I was initiated.”
