Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  In spite of her goose-pimples, Philippa laughed. But later, taken to task alone by Kiaya Khátún for her disobedience, Philippa indulged in spite of herself with an outburst. ‘The cooking lessons, the sewing, the scenting, the painting—it’s nothing to do with life or culture or accomplishments or self-respect. It’s a ritual aimed at provoking the senses. It’s the same as scrubbing the pigs the day before market. The effect on the girls doesn’t matter. We’re being turned out and polished like buttons, for the Sultan’s petty adornment.’

  Kiaya Khátún, unsurprised, did not stir from her pile of delicate cushions. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That is the function of the harem precisely. Did you believe you had joined a seminar for feminine culture? Very few of your companions, I promise you, would wish it. Do they strike you as unhappy? They have nothing to do but study how to make themselves desirable. Were they to tell you the truth, their only complaint might well be that, under this Sultan, it is put to no use.’

  Philippa’s straight brown gaze did not waver. ‘I know. They’re not unhappy,’ she said. ‘Any woman will run to seed like that, given the chance. You get sort of hypnotized by the mirror, and you’re still painted when they lay you in your coffin. I don’t want it to happen to me.’

  There were some papers lying at Kiaya Khátún’s side. She picked them up with her little, ringed hands, and looked up at Philippa. ‘If you are summoned by the Sultan you will have to go. You know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philippa. ‘The boys are told the same thing. But they go to school.’

  ‘Outside the bedchamber,’ said Kiaya Khátún, watching her quietly, ‘the boys will have men’s lives to lead. Moreover, it has been ordained by Mohammed that women should not be treated as intellectual beings … lest they aspire to equality with men.’

  ‘Do you agree?’ said Philippa Somerville directly.

  There was a little silence, during which Kiaya Khátún, her black eyebrows arched, stared at Philippa, coolly surprised. But when she spoke, she sounded less angry than thoughtful. ‘You are an outspoken child, are you not?’ said Güzel. ‘I will answer your question with another. Are there any of your acquaintance, men or women, with whom you do not consider yourself equal?’

  ‘Kate,’ said Philippa, and flushed. ‘My mother. And my father, when he was alive. And there’s a woman in Scotland … whose name is Sybilla,’ She stopped.

  ‘You have, I see, a commendable degree of honesty,’ said Güzel gravely. ‘There are three people to whom you feel inferior.’

  From pink, Philippa went scarlet all down her neck and the flat, transparent front of her blouse. ‘Then I put it badly,’ she said. ‘There are three I know will always be better than I am, no matter how long I live. As for everybody else, I don’t see how I can tell till I’m older. When you’re sixteen you’re inferior to practically everybody. I can do what I like with Kuzucuyum, for he’s only two. If he were sixteen he might very well show me up as a moron.’

  ‘And his father?’ said Güzel.

  ‘Shows everybody up as a moron,’ said Philippa, who had learned a good many skills in a month. ‘The point is, even if you were equal to him, you wouldn’t feel equal to him, if you know what I mean. My mother can handle him.’

  Kiaya Khátún veiled her eyes over the laughter within them. ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘seems to have enjoyed a large number of successes.… I am having you registered for a short course of tuition in the Princes’ school. You will be escorted there and back every morning, and we shall see later whether the course might be developed. The report here says that you are exceptionally quick to train, if one ignores your slow progress with Turkish. Also’—as Philippa, paling with pleasure and amazement, was opening her mouth—‘you are further advanced than any in the harem, I am told, in the execution of music. In the afternoons, from now on, you will have the extra duty of presenting yourself to play in the apartments of Roxelana Sultan, and to perform any other service she may require. This will take you out of the main building of the harem and is an exceptional honour. I shall accompany you.’

  Which was how, as Philippa confided to her diary later that evening, the Fates took a hand in the headlong diploma course in Running to Seed.

  Next day, Philippa was moved out of the little dormitory she shared with nine others, and given a room, along the same narrow corridor, to herself. It was still more of a prison than a room, with tiny windows overlooking a courtyard and a double grille in the corridor wall, locked on its inner side, through which the slaves were able to kindle her lamp. Apart from rugs and cushions and a single low folding table, the room was empty. Her bedding, neatly rolled, was kept on a wide high shelf, reached by a ladder, together with such possessions as she had.

  To suit her new dignity, her wardrobe was increased, and the number and quality of her jewels. To look after them she had, in addition to Tulip, a pleasant soft-spoken negress for her own, and a small allowance of slipper-money for presents. And for the first time, that morning, she missed the interminable painting and prinking, and went instead, with her servants and eunuch, down the narrow stairs and along the network of passages until she came to the Black Eunuch’s courtyard, where on her first day the Kislar Agha had seen her. There, in a series of small interlocked rooms overlooking the courtyard, the young princes of the harem were once educated.

  Now, since the Sultan’s heirs were grown men and none had been born since except to Khourrém his wife, the daily tutors had little to do but attend a handful of the younger well-born: a vizier’s two sons, and the son of a friend of Khourrém’s. Blowing under her veil, with her new high arched boots pinching, but a vast satisfaction under her flat nacré velvet, Philippa sat down crosslegged with her escort in a row at the back of her juniors, and proceeded, with an eagerness which would have paralysed her mother’s entire sensory system, to imbibe the principles of logic, metaphysics, Greek, grammar and rhetoric, for a start.

  The afternoon was a different matter. In the afternoon, painted, trousered, kaftáned, and perfumed to a disturbing degree (one of the Five Sensuous Offerings) Philippa followed Kiaya Khátún with reluctance through the threaded stairways and walks of the harem to a courtyard, and across the courtyard, where a fountain played and carp glinted red in a pool, to the rooms of Khourrém the Laughing One; now Roxelana Sultán.

  The wife of Suleiman the Magnificent had a large chamber; bigger than any Philippa had yet seen. Its floors were of coloured mosaics, overlaid with a pattern of rugs and drenched with light from above, where the cupola, gilded within and without, was ringed with a fillet of windows. The walls were of tiles: green and orange and white, masked here and there by the velour of deep hanging rugs. Silver lamps hung on long silver laces from the ceiling carved in a fretting of stucco, and the embrasures all round the walls, where her jewelled ewer stood, and her books and her lute, were each framed in a lattice of cedarwood. A motif of tulips, half concealed by the coloured silk hangings, was inlaid, discreetly, in ivory within the dark wood of the door, and the backless throne on which Khourrém sat, wide as a bed, was padded with furs.

  The small figure on the spread leopard-skins had none of the repose or the classical beauty of Güzel. Philippa saw a Roman nose, set in a pure oval face with a pursed mouth and plucked brow wreathed with shivering pendants. The jewelled silk gauze which draped her high headdress like a fragile pavilion fluttered and rolled as she turned her head, speaking in rapid Turkish to a negro page-boy behind her, and then to one of her mutes. Philippa knew how her lips were so rosy and her eyebrows so high and deliciously arched, but the round dark eyes on either side of that imperious nose were Khourrém’s own native beauty, and her speech was articulate and precise. The confidence of a middle-aged woman, who twelve years ago had simply left the Old Seraglio, a thing unheard of, with her slaves, her companions, her pages, her black and white eunuchs, and had joined her lord, here.

  She ceased speaking and, at a sign from one of the eunuchs, Kiaya Khátún glided forward. Philippa
, her neck aching, her eyes humbly downcast, heard her new name being repeated and the fact that although she had little Turkish, she could respond to simple commands. She was aware of being looked at; then Roxelana Sultán raised her voice. ‘Come!’

  Obedient as one of the mutes, Philippa summoned all her hard-won training and glided too, without mishap, over the carpets. The brown eyes were shrewd; the clothes rich but neat: the three-foot train tucked into the wide jewelled sash; the slippers curled, and of a skittish red satin. Khourrém had a neat ankle, and knew it.

  She was being asked to bring sherbet. Philippa bowed, hand on heart, thought strengtheningly of Kate, and turned smoothly, to catch the eye of the small page, who already had a jug in his hands. Keep at it, and head eunuch for you, thought Philippa to herself, and grinned at him, accepting the jug, while he brought her a tray and cups to go with it, trotting behind with a towel. He might have been twelve.

  The cups were solid emerald. She filled one for Roxelana and one for Kiaya Khátún who had seated herself, on command, by the steps of the throne. The page brought a table and Philippa laid the sherbet tray on it, restraining herself from a mad desire to drain the whole jug. ‘Now, the lute,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘Khourrém Sultán desires you to play for her.’

  No shortage of helpers. The eunuch brought the lute: the pageboy arranged a pile of cushions for her to sit on.

  Someone had presented the instrument: it was made western-style, with an inscription in Latin. It was quite out of tune.

  No Gideon, now, to chaff her and give her an A. Get it wrong now, dearie, said Philippa to Durr-i Bakht; and they’ll stitch your mouth shut and tip you into a jar. She tuned, quickly, and got her strings at least in the proper relationship before wondering what on earth she was expected to play. Kiaya Khátún saved her the trouble. ‘I have told the Sultana,’ she said,’of the song “The Knight of Stevermark” I encountered on shipboard. Play this, if you know it. Even better: if you know the words, sing.’

  Philippa stared at Kiaya Khátún. Then she drew a long breath. ‘I know the tune. The words are not very … I know only one version.’

  ‘There is only one version,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘If you know it, sing it. I shall translate.’

  And she did, very adequately, Philippa thought, singing her way doggedly through fifteen verses and all the double-entendres.

  Roxelana enjoyed it. She began to smile half-way through, and by the end had broken into open-mouthed laughter. Then, summoning Philippa, she pulled off and gave to her a jade pin from her robe. Philippa, who yearned above rubies for one swig of the sherbet, thanked her stiffly in Turkish, and drew a smile and a word of dismissal. The page came for the lute. Philippa bowed, backed and fled.

  Later, Kiaya Khátún summoned her. ‘You did well. Your work was acceptable: Khourrém Sultán finds you witty. Next time you will be alone. You will perform for her only classical works: you will find she has a taste for them, and is perfectly knowledgeable, so she will demand a high standard of playing. But you will notice also that she enjoys laughter. Your invention must suggest what you do.’

  ‘Clown?’ said Philippa, without further surprise. Here, lunacy flowed with the fountains.

  ‘With grace. Always with grace,’ said Kiaya Khátún warningly. ‘Khourrém Sultán makes a powerful friend.’

  It had been a long day. ‘… If I can go?’ said Philippa pleadingly. ‘I promised him bubbles if he behaved in his bath.’

  ‘I suggest,’ said Kiaya Khátún gravely, ‘you restrict your use of the personal pronoun. Misunderstandings occur. And in Topkapi, the sentences are irreversible.’

  20

  Constantinople: Topkapi

  ‘Let us be common,’ had said His Excellency the French Ambassador, sitting at his desk in the Embassy in the days prior to his ceremonial presentation to the most high Emperor and mighty king, Sultan Suleiman Khan. ‘Our clothes wrought upon goldfully, glorious as Assurbanipal with a dab of clove-gillieflower scent on the pulses. Let us be common and arch.’

  On an annual income from the French Crown, supplemented from one’s own estates, one might live generously but not extravagantly as Ambassador at the Sublime Porte. M. d’Aramon et Luetz, whose own presentation years ago had cost him over three thousand pounds in entertainment and gifts, was silent as Onophrion’s preparations drew to a close; and he began to have an inkling of the amount of gold the Controller had been permitted to spend.

  By custom, all those in the Ambassador’s party must be uniformly clothed. That meant livery for, say, twenty servants and two pages; robes, or short gowns over matching doublets and breeches for the dozen chief French citizens of the city who would accompany them, and court dress of the most elaborate kind for the Ambassador and M. d’Aramon, presenting him, together with lesser suits for the half-dozen Embassy officials with them. Cloaks, tunics, caps, shoes and jewels for forty or more.

  Most of the garments, M. d’Aramon knew, had come on the Dauphiné. The last week had been spent fitting and enriching them. Submitting, courteously, to Master Zitwitz’s deft, measuring hands, the retiring Ambassador approved without comment the ice-blue velvet proposed for his doublet, and the massive blue and silver over-robe the Controller lifted like a child from its coffer and offered for his admiration. ‘Cloth of silver, Monseigneur, with an ogival frame of blue velvet and raised knots and leaves in pulled loopings of silver silk. There is a matching cap in blue velvet with aigrette feathers. All the household are in blue and white satin, and I have put the merchants, with His Excellency’s agreement, in black silk lined with scarlet. The shirts for yourself and His Excellency are of lace, edged with silk Florentine thread. I thought a pleated collar instead of a stiffened wing, as I gather the Turkish robes you will be required to wear may be collared and heavy. I should advise you to unclasp the over-robe and give it to me before assuming the Turkish attire.’

  ‘And what,’ said M. d’Aramon, with gentle amusement, ‘will His Excellency be wearing?’

  ‘The same as M. le Baron, if you will forgive the liberty,’ said His Excellency’s soft voice from the doorway. ‘Onophrion couldn’t face the problems of precedence and neither could I, so we had two lots made. I’m sorry about the useless blue velvet. It is supposed to indicate that you are prepared to wear it once and then throw it away. You could wear it afterwards, perhaps, at a large, vulgar banquet.’

  ‘I gather,’ said M. d’Aramon dryly, ‘it is necessary to impress.’

  ‘It is necessary,’ said Lymond briefly, ‘to beg.… I came to tell you, there was a blind and somewhat sickly descendant of Sohâib Rûmi downstairs requiring help to write a letter in French. Your secretary swore that both he and the boy with him were probably rogues, and they certainly couldn’t pay an asper, but I thought it might be politic to help them. If any harm comes of it, it’s not your secretary’s fault.’

  ‘My secretary is wrong. We are here to assist,’ said M. d’Aramon firmly. He had watched his successor in the past week, with the merchants who came to kiss his hands; the suppliants; the formal, inquisitive calls from his fellow Ambassadors of Venice, Ragusa, Epidaurus, Chios, Transylvania, Florence and Hungary. The French Embassy had a name for generosity. Its doors were open to travellers: its purse—even his, d’Aramon’s, private purse—had been ready to help the stranded visitor with clothes, money and horses: at his own expense also he had bought and freed not a few Christian slaves, whatever their country, from the hands of the Turks.

  It was a tradition he would like to see followed. He hoped, not for the first time, for many reasons, that Crawford’s petition would be swiftly successful.

  At dawn on Tuesday, a cool autumn day, the Mehterkhané, the Sultan’s musicians crossed the Golden Horn to the French Ambassador’s house, and with the low roll of drum and kettledrum below every unlatticed window, commanded the household to its duty. Onophrion, his supreme moment arrived, calmly holding in his plump hands the whole tangled skein of the ceremony, roused and fed, dressed and
gathered his charges, hardly aware of the thundering of trumpet and cymbal outside. The Baron de Luetz, for all the times he had experienced it before, still could not avoid the extra beat of the heart; and this time, the knowledge that it was the last time: that for him, without greater title or honour, it was quite finished.

  Georges Gaultier, uncomfortable in fur-collared black, was uneasy about many things.… Marthe’s long absence, and the performance of that damned spinet. It had gone yesterday to the Seraglio, uncrated, touched up; erected, on the special litter made for it; and he had handed it into the gateway himself.

  They said it was safe. Lymond had said that if anyone nicked off an emerald pimple it would be a God’s blessing. He had seen the gloves Lymond would be carrying today, and the matched sapphires set in his chain, with a diamond pendant the size of a crown.… He wondered again, furiously, where that fool of a girl had got to.

  Plan of Constantinople drawn by Giovanni Vavassore about 1520.

  Lymond was already awake, standing silently at the window in his trailing bed-gown, when the drumming began. In the Golden Horn, a porcelain mist rose like steam from a dish of bright liquid brass, blanching tone from the undulating skyline of the city over the water, a mosaic of olive and grey, the sun touching gold from its domes.

  On the headland climbed the dark cypresses and the crowded roofs of the Seraglio; the Divan Tower, the minarets, the domes, the dentelé toothpicks of the flues. On the right, the twin minarets and the piled yellow whaleback of what had been St Sophia. The snail-domes of mosque upon mosque: Beyazit, Mohammed the Conqueror, Selim. The half-finished building of Sultan Suleiman himself.… For the True Believer, the ways to Paradise were legion. One built khans, mosques, hospitals, fountains. One repaired bridges, and gave bread to dogs, and bought and loosed singing birds from their cages. About caged children, the Prophet was less explicit.