Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Lymond slipped off his doublet. ‘No, Míkál,’ he said. And swinging the dark green silk for a moment from one idle finger, he allowed it to fall, spreading lightly over the breathing bronze flesh. ‘With or without bells. I dare not have you catch cold. You would be a walking tintinabulation of clangers.’

  There was a blur of movement. The green silk was on the floor and the boy’s sweet warmth, enveloping, was where Lymond had been. But Lymond had moved quite as swiftly and was there no longer, but at the window, which looked out, he saw briefly, on a little courtyard, with flat trays of something dark and aromatic laid out on the bricks, and a garden beyond. Míkál, arrested with dignity and grace in the place of his failure, stood breathing lightly a little way off, and said, ‘Hâkim?’

  His back to the window, Lymond took a quick breath, and held it for a moment, his eyes searching Míkál’s. Then he said gently, ‘Thou art faultless: delicate as a flower. May thy love be beautiful. May thy beauty be light. May thy light be exalted light. But with another, Míkál’

  The dark brows in the faun-face were straight. ‘I have played to you,’ said Míkál.

  ‘I know,’ said Lymond. He hesitated and then, clearly against his will, he said, ‘It isn’t that music doesn’t matter: the reverse, as it happens. So my defences against it are very strong. Can you understand that?’

  The reasoning was plain enough, evidently, to Míkál. He dropped on the mattress, stretching on his two slender elbows, and looking up at Francis Crawford with a kind of hurt anger, mixed with a queer bravura challenge, he said, ‘Will the tongue of Ummídé speak for me?’ And went on in his soft and desperate voice:

  Thou art a half-drunk Turk; I am a half-slain bird.

  Thy affair with me is easy; my desire of thee is difficult.…

  Thou settest thy foot in the field. I wash my hands of life.

  Thou causest sweat to drip from thy cheek. I pour blood from my heart.…

  When shall the luck be mine to lift thee drunken from the saddle,

  While that crystal-clear arm embraces my neck like a sword-belt?

  Lymond had not moved, although his heavy gaze this time was downbent; and there was no levity for once in his face. He said, ‘I am sorry. It is a hurt for me, too. There is no apology enough for him who holds the wine of love in his hand.’

  I ask for no apology,’ said Míkál. ‘I ask nothing but kindness.’

  ‘I have learned,’ said Lymond, ‘that kindness without love is no kindness.’

  Pushing himself slowly backwards, Míkál stood slowly up. ‘Thy love then is given to women?’

  ‘To no one,’ said Lymond; but the boy’s intent ear caught the breath of delay. ‘To whom, then?’ said Míkál. ‘To one of your friends?’

  This time, no trace of hesitation was visible. ‘My love is given to no one,’ said Lymond. ‘To neither man, woman or child. Duty, friendship, compassion I do owe to many. But love I offer to none.’

  Míkál did not say anything. For a long time he stood still; then, moving slowly, he walked round the mattress and up to the window, to come to rest, without attempting this time to touch him, in the space before Lymond. Then he spoke to him gently. ‘How many years hast thou, Hâkim?’

  Francis Crawford’s real age. Something the Dame de Doubtance had known and the girl Marthe had not. Something which, building up mastery over a strong and heterogeneous company of battle-tough men, he had never revealed. Timeless as Enoch …

  ‘I am twenty-six,’ Lymond said. And flinched as Míkál, his eyes dark with pity, leaned forward dry-lipped and kissed him once, on the cheek, before turning lightly and swiftly to walk through the door.

  Salablanca watched him go. He waited until he thought all sounds inside the chamber had ceased, and easing the door, slipped inside to find some corner where he could rest on guard until day. It was not his fault that Lymond, wide awake and sensitive that night to every change in the air, had lain on the brocade mattress, and had watched him beneath half-closed eyes from the moment the doorhandle stirred.

  He saw that it was Salablanca, and half smiled, unseen in the dark, and lay still thereafter, part-dressed under the single thin quilt, his sword by his hand. Purgatory, said the Qur’ân, was a beautiful meadow peopled by the spirits of the feeble-minded, illegitimate children and those neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell. There was no privacy there either. But at least there was no need to talk.

  An hour after that, the intruder arrived. The fir-wood lattice was beautifully hung. First there was a mere shadow between it and the moonlight; then it swung open quite without noise, and a man, naked but for a cloth round his waist, dropped without sound into the room. The knife in his hand was curved, a foot and a half long; and even Salablanca’s shout didn’t stop him as he flung himself towards the Ambassador’s bed. Lymond, lying quite still, watching him through his lashes, let his assassin reach the bed and lift up his arm before he threw himself rolling off the mattress and on to his feet, sword in hand.

  The knife had descended. The man hesitated, pulling back his steel in a drift of light moonlit feathers as Salablanca reached him behind, and the intruder turned, teeth bared, to deal with him.

  Lymond’s sword got there first. It drove through the naked body, hard and slanting to avoid Salablanca just beyond and the man screamed, dropping the knife, and then holding his side, bent low and ran, swift as a rat for the window.

  Lymond got there on his heels as the would-be murderer, blood streaming dark over his waist-cloth, hung on to the balcony and dropped. There was a clatter, and Lymond, jumping wide after him, laughed breathlessly, and Salablanca, following, heard him say, ‘Mind the jam.…’ Mother-naked; streaming with peaches and gore, the wounded assassin somersaulted, groaned, picked himself up, and staggering, set off through the yard to the garden, Lymond and Salablanca almost upon him.

  It was then, in the moment of success, that a sword flashed in the darkness ahead of them; and another and another. Wild and unkempt, half-naked like the wounded intruder or covered in animal skins and rags, a pack of men ran out into the courtyard, blocking Lymond’s path and surrounding Salablanca behind him, while the injured man, scurrying past, made good his escape.

  It was well organized. Easy to find a gypsy, a delly, and pay him to break in and kill. Rarer to instruct such a man, if he failed, to draw his victim, escaping, into a trap such as this. Lymond, fighting quite simply for his life, parried one blade with a shower of sparks in the darkness, flung himself under the arc of another, undercut at a dark body and backing, called to Salablanca, ducking and cutting as he went. Somewhere behind him was a door. He thudded against it, heeling to one side as a sword drove past him to splinter the wood and felt, parrying with one hand, for the handle.

  It was locked. A flash of white and a clot of black moving figures, like a night swarm of wasps, told where Salablanca must be. Bending, twisting, striking, Francis Crawford fought in silence until, catching someone’s blade in the steel of his crossguard, he used the second’s advantage to drive the man plunging before him, straight-armed through the throng to where Salablanca had been. His side touched the marble edge of a water cistern just as a second and third man, closing in, turned their swords on him and he dropped like a stone, cutting as he went at the bare flesh of their thighs. To the clash of metal on metal, the panting of men under stress, the clatter of trays and the scuffle of naked feet on the brick, there was added a scream and a splash, which gave him an instant’s satisfaction. Then there came the rush he had feared.

  He parried some of it, but there were too many this time. He had time to think that Salablanca must be dead: to admire in a detached way the speed of it, so that although now doors were opening and voices calling, it was now much too late. A blade seeking his throat seared hot against the side of his neck; another took his sword arm, and as they kicked the useless blade from him and closed in he went down at last, unconscious of the thrusts he had taken; using all the tricks in his experience to
hurt, to maim, to stay merely alive.

  The noise was increasing. Light, flickering and jumping, had entered the courtyard and was sending monstrous shadows up the walls of the outbuildings and house: there was a tread of many feet and a shouting and a clatter of steel. Above him, a gross bearded figure, grinning, had risen from the mass of his assailants, sword in hand.… His executioner. For the last time, using all his considerable strength, Francis Crawford tried to throw off the men pressing upon him, but there were too many: he was locked, hands, arms, legs, thighs, lying there in the dust with the sword over his heart. Then the delly astride him, still grinning, put his fists one above the other on the pommel of Lymond’s own blade, and holding it upright, prepared to drive it straight down like a man piercing a well. And since there was no hope, Lymond laughed, looking up at him, and said, in English, ‘And so … it was all for nothing at all. And who is to care?’

  The body which cannoned into the swordsman at that second was a big one, and solid, or it could not have thrown the assassin off his balance as it did, and collapsed the group of men intent on their victim. It hit the delly as if a block of the marble cistern had fallen on him, and as he staggered and half-fell over Lymond’s body and the kneeling forms of his fellows, the newcomer produced, without fuss, a short, broad-bladed sword, and sank it into the assassin’s heart up to the hilt.

  It was Onophrion Zitwitz. And as Lymond, wordless for once, lay and stared up at him, the Janissaries on his heels poured over the courtyard, sweeping men like rubbish before them. The men holding Lymond rose and scattered until, scimitars falling, shoulder to shoulder, the white caps engulfed them as well, and nothing living was left in the courtyard of those who had taken part in that excellent ambush but the dying. No one escaped.

  Lymond saw it as a shifting embroidery round the dark bulk of Onophrion Zitwitz, bending over him, anxiety on his sweating pink face. ‘Your Excellency …’ said Onophrion; and Lymond, who had borne the title for less than half a day, began to laugh and stopped because it hurt so much, and said, ‘My dear Onophrion … Tes mains sont des nuages. Another moment and the pie would have burned.’

  ‘You are wounded. Your Excellency …’ The high-stranded voice faded. ‘I saw, but I could not help. I had to leave you to summon the Janissaries.’

  One man could do nothing. You did right. You expected this, then?’ The laughter of relief and reaction had gone. Salablanca … Salablanca … Salablanca … But give this man his due first.

  ‘I was uneasy, Your Excellency. It fell to me to keep watch outside. Salablanca watched in your chamber. We did not bring it to Your Excellency’s notice.’

  But it had come to His Excellency’s notice. And His Excellency, ruffled more than he would admit by a trying episode with an importunate boy, had ignored Salablanca’s presence and given him neither instructions nor thanks. If he had, that first would-be assailant would never have left his bedroom alive. ‘Salablanca?’ said Lymond.

  ‘Is dead, Your Excellency. They have carried him inside.… You cannot rise. I will find you a Utter.’

  ‘No. There is no need,’ Lymond said.

  It was possible to sit, and to stand, and to walk. It was possible to see Salablanca where he lay, his eyes open and sightless in his blood-sodden clothes, and to close his lids and take from his neck the prayer-beads he wore, to send to his household in Algiers where there were, comfortingly, so many brothers. It was possible next day, with no humiliating swathe of bandage revealed beneath one’s high shirt and tight cuffs and impeccable doublet, to stand in the graveyard among the stony forest of turbans and hear the Bektashi Baba’s calm voice addressing his Maker.

  O God, be merciful to the living and to the dead, to the present and to the absent, to the small and to the great who are among us.… Distinguish him who is now dead by the possession of repose and tranquillity, by favour of Thy mercy and divine forgiveness. O God! increase his goodness, if he be amongst the number of the good; and pardon his sins, if he be ranked among the transgressors. Grant him peace and salvation, O God. Convert his tomb into a delicious abode equal to that of paradise and not into a cavern, like that of hell. Be merciful to him, Thou most merciful of all Beings.

  ‘Lord, great and true, Thou buriest day in night and night in day. Thou leadest forth the living from the dead and the dead from the living. All things come from Thee and return to Thee again. Forgive the sins of mankind for Thy glory’s sake. And lead us to the Light, for Thou art the Light of Light.’

  And it was possible to sail then, in all one’s wealth and magnificence for Constantinople, with the words of Míkál at the graveside, buried deep as the tomb in one’s memory:

  ‘Duty; friendship; compassion. Which moved him to die for you?’

  18

  Constantinople

  Dear Kate. As you will see from the address, I am staying as a concubine in the harem of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, son of Sultan Setim Khan, son of Sultan Bayezid Khan, King of Kings, Sovereign of Sovereigns; Commander of All that can be Commanded, Sultan of Babylon, Lord of the White Sea and the Black Sea, most high Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, most mighty King of Persia and Arabia, Syria and Egypt, Supreme Lord of Europe and Asia, Prince of Mecca and Aleppo, Possessor of Jerusalem and Lord of the Universal Sea.

  You will be glad to know lam keeping well, thanks to a lot of exercise and a good loosening sherbet the first day. The food would not be very acceptable in Hexham, but I am appending a very good recipe for Turkish Delight, for which you will need the pulp of white grapes, semolina flour, honey, rose-water and apricot kernels. Perhaps Charles can get them in Newcastle.

  There are two hundred and ninety-nine other girls here: but no one else from Northumberland. Tell Betty I have the dearest little black page. She will laugh when she hears that he answers to Tulip.…

  ‘Fippy!’

  Philippa, who could recognize that cry over two courtyards, also recognized that some people answered to funnier names than Tulip, and grinned, lifting her pen from her diary. She lowered it again to write, in her black script, a large adolescent Ha-ha! under the foregoing, and shutting the book, went off at speed indoors to locate the calling Kuzúm.

  He was standing at the top of the stairs to her sleeping-quarters, the cone of yellow hair fanned out with exertion; a wary expression in the round cornflower eyes. ‘Hullo?’ he said.

  That ingratiating tone was all too hideously familiar. ‘Hallo,’ said Philippa to the light of her life. ‘What have you done?’

  The child she had brought all the way from Thessalonika: the child whom Evangelista Donati had called Kuzucuyum bent on her a gaze of reproach. ‘I’m a very wet boy,’ said Kuzúm.

  He waited blandly while, detonating mildly, she thudded up the stairs to his side, and continued to gaze up at her blandly as she skidded to a halt and, staring down, said, ‘What’s that on your head?’

  ‘That’s my little hat,’ said Kuzúm.

  ‘That’s a wooden spoon,’ said Philippa. She disentangled it from the thick, silky hair. ‘It’s sticky.… Why are you a wet boy?’

  ‘I sat in my dinner,’ said Kuzúm. ‘Just like Tulip. What did you said?’

  ‘I said Tulip fell in by mistake, and I wish you had a better grasp of the English language.… It’s not funny.’

  ‘Laugh again,’ said Kuzúm, his eyes beaming.

  One of the négresses, smiling, had come to clear up the mess on the tiling. ‘I’m not laughing. You won’t be, either, in a minute,’ said Philippa with relish. ‘You’ll have to have a clean shirt and a bath.’

  The head nurse bathed him, and the noise reached even the room where she was unrolling his mattress. But when he came round the door, he was fresh and pink and filled with a universal and boundless goodwill. ‘Here’s me again!’ he said. ‘Hullo, Fippy darling!’

  ‘Hullo!’ said Philippa the stalwart, who in between matters which were not funny at all had set herself, with grim humour, to frame a coy letter to Kate.

 
‘Hullo, darling!’ she added; and dried her wet eyes, as he hugged her, on the bright yellow head.

  Ragna, the mother of Worm, she thought later, gazing out of her window. You made a heroic entrance, in a long plait and leggings and a cloud of Teutonic brimstone, and found yourself instead, child on knee, examining the spots on its bottom and trying to correct, irritably, an inadequate siphoning system and a low-pressure nose-blow.

  Because of Kuzucuyum, she could recall almost nothing of that hurried voyage from Thessalonika to record in her diary. To Evangelista Donati she owed the arrangement which had brought them to Stamboul safely by sea. No matter what happened to Gabriel now, they were away from the Children of Devshirmé and that shadowy, unknown figure by whose hand Madame Donati had already died.

  Here, they were safe. Here in Topkapi, the Sultan Suleiman’s Seraglio, luxury being the steward and the treasure inexhaustible.

  Mr Crawford had said that. That besides being a professional mercenary he was highly educated had become plain by degrees to Philippa. He knew for example that Constantinople, which the Turks called Stamboul, had become after the fall of Rome the capital of the whole Roman Empire and the richest city on earth: It hath none equal with it in the world except Bagdat, that mighty Citie of the Ismaélites.

  Fragments of what he had told her, briefly, on the rare occasions when he would talk of their destination, came now to her mind. ‘ … Pillars and walls he hath overlaid with beaten gold, whereon he hath engraven all the wars made by him and his ancestors … and he hath prepared a throne for himself of gold and precious stones, and hath adorned it with a golden crown hanging on high by golden chains, beset with precious stones and pearls the price whereof no man is able to value.… Furthermore,’ Mr Crawford had quoted, staring out over the water, ’the Grecians themselves are exceedingly rich in gold and precious stones, their garments being made of crimson intermingled with gold and embroidered and are all carried upon horses much like unto the Children of Kings.… Justinian rode into his new Church of St Sophia, the most beautiful and most costly in the world, and said, Solomon, I have surpassed thee. Christians held it and the city of Byzas before it for nearly twelve hundred years, Philippa. Then the Turks took it all from them.’