The Moses Stone

The following morning, they sought out a local potter. They offered him just sufficient gold that he would ask no questions, then took possession of his workshop for the rest of the day. They remained in there, with the door barred shut, until late into the evening, working by the flickering light of a number of animal-fat lamps.

The next day the four men went their separate ways, each with a single further task to perform.

They never saw each other again.

Part One

Morocco

1

Margaret O'Connor loved the medina, and she simply adored the souk.

She'd been told that the word 'medina' meant 'city' in Arabic but in Rabat, as in many places in Morocco, it was a generic term applied to the old town, a labyrinth of winding streets, most far too narrow to accommodate cars. Indeed, in many of them two people walking side by side would find it a bit of a squeeze. And in the souk itself, although there were large open areas surrounded by stalls and open-fronted shops, some of the passageways were even more restricted and – to Margaret – even more charming in their eccentricity. The streets meandered around ancient plastered houses, their walls cracked and crazed with age, the paint flaking and discoloured by the sun.

Every time she and Ralph visited the area, they were surrounded by hordes of people. At first, she'd been slightly disappointed that most of the locals seemed to favour Western-style clothing – jeans and T-shirts were much in evidence – rather than the traditional Arab jellabas she'd been expecting. The guide-book they'd bought from the reception desk of their hotel helped to explain why.

Although Morocco was an Islamic nation, the population of the country was only about one-quarter Arab: the bulk of the inhabitants were Berbers, more properly called Imazighen, the original non-Arab people of North Africa. The Berbers had formed the original population of Morocco and initially resisted the Arab invasion of their country, but over time most of them converted to Islam and began speaking Arabic. This gradual assimilation of the Berbers into the Arab community had resulted in a colourful mixture of dress, culture and language, with both Arabic and the Berber tongue – Tamazight – being widely spoken, as well as French, Spanish and even English.

Margaret O'Connor loved the sounds and the smells and the bustle. She could even put up with the seemingly endless numbers of small boys running through the narrow passageways, pleading for money or offering to act as guides for the obvious tourists wandering about.

It was her first visit to Morocco with her husband Ralph, who was – it has to be said – rather less enamoured with the country than his wife. He found the crowds of people that thronged the souk claustrophobic, and the myriad and unfamiliar smells bothered him. He much preferred the foreign – but infinitely more familiar – seaside resorts that lined the Spanish costas, their usual holiday destination. But this year Margaret had wanted to try something more exotic, somewhere different, and Morocco had seemed a good compromise.

It was on a different continent – Africa – but still close enough to avoid having to endure a long-haul flight. They'd rejected Casablanca, because everybody had told them it was just a typically dirty and noisy sea-port – a far cry from the classic romantic image created by Hollywood. So they'd settled on a budget flight to Casablanca and hired a car for the drive north to the midpriced hotel they'd booked in Rabat.

And early that evening, their last in Morocco, they were walking towards the souk once more, Margaret excited, Ralph with a resigned expression on his face.

'What, exactly, do you want to buy in there?'

'Nothing. Everything. I don't know.' Margaret stopped and looked at her husband. 'There's no romance in your soul, is there?' It was a statement more than a question. 'Look, we leave here tomorrow, and I just wanted to walk through the souk again and take some more photographs, something to help us remember this holiday. After all, I doubt if we'll be coming back here again, will we?'

'Not if I've got anything to do with it,' Ralph muttered, as his wife turned back towards the medina, but not quite sotto voce enough to prevent Margaret hearing him.

'Next year,' she said, 'we'll go back to Spain, OK? So just stop complaining, smile, and at least pretend you're enjoying yourself.'

As on every previous occasion since they'd arrived in Rabat, they approached the medina from the Kasbah des Oudaias, simply because it was, for Margaret, the most attractive and picturesque route. The kasbah itself was a twelfth- century fortress erected on a cliff-top, its crenellated battlements and solid stone ramparts overlooking what was originally the pirate town of Sale, and within its walls the place was a delight. The whitewashed houses all sported a band of sky-blue paint, the colour identical on every property, that ran around their bases, from ground level up to, usually, about three feet in height, though on some it reached as high as eight or ten feet. Although the colour had clearly not been applied recently, it nevertheless gave the area the feeling of having been newly painted.

It was a strangely attractive decorative feature that neither Margaret nor her husband had ever seen before and, though they'd asked several people, nobody appeared to have any idea why it had been done. Their requests for elucidation had been met with puzzled faces and elaborate shrugs. The houses within the kasbah, it seemed, had always been decorated like that.

From the kasbah, they wound their way steadily down a wide walkway, flat sections of the sloping path broken by individual groups of three steps, obviously constructed to cope with the gradient, towards the medina. The river ran beside them on their left, while to the right lay an open grassy area, a popular spot for people who wanted to sit and admire the view, or simply to lie there and watch the world go by.

The entrance to the medina looked dark and uninviting, partly because of the brilliance of the late-afternoon sunlight outside, but mainly because of the curved metalwork that formed an elegant semicircular roof over this part of the old town. The metal panels were geometric in design and didn't seem to allow much light to penetrate, but imparted a kind of opaque and shimmering iridescence to the sky above, almost giving it the appearance of mother-of-pearl.

Once inside, the now-familiar smells reasserted themselves in the gloom – smoke, metallic dust, herbs and spices, newly cut wood, and a strange and pervasive odour that Margaret had finally identified as coming from the tanneries. The noise level rose markedly as they walked into the souk, the clatter of the metalworkers' hammers a constant counterpoint to the hum of conversation, of buyers haggling with traders, and the occasional shouts as voices were raised in excitement or anger.

And, as usual, it was full of both people and cats.

The first time Margaret had visited the medina and souk, she'd been appalled at the sheer number of feral cats they'd seen. But her concern was allayed almost immediately when she realized how healthy they looked and saw the first of several feeding areas, where noticeably well-fed cats and kittens lolled about, and where plates of food were left out for the market's feline residents. She presumed that the traders welcomed their presence because they would ensure that the number of rats and mice were kept under control, though the look of some of the larger cats sleeping in the sun suggested it had been quite a long time since they'd had to hunt for their own dinners.

The sheer range of products and skills on offer in the souk was, as always, amazing. They passed stalls selling black metal lanterns; blue and green glass bottles that could be made to order; leather goods, including chairs; exquisite boxes fashioned from cedar; shoes; clothes hanging on racks and poles