Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The pale face did not change. But light in a shimmering band slid over the delicate cheekbones and aquiline nose and lit the dark recesses of the unwinking eyes. The negro moved, and the Baron de Luetz, catching sight for a moment of what the casket contained, drew in his breath. Then Suleiman Khan, dismissing it, said dryly, ‘We thank you. Whether she will accept them is a matter for the princess my wife. Should she suffer no loss, she may desire no compensation. For my part, my reply is quite clear. What the King of France asks, instantly he shall have. Bring me this offer in your master’s own seal and holograph. Prove to me that the boy in my Seraglio is the son of King Henry; or prove to me merely beyond doubt that he is not the son, as is claimed, of my Vizier Jubrael Pasha. And he is yours, without payment, to leave when you will, and the girl also.’

  The shut casket shone on the dais. For a long moment, pale gold and white fur, the wilful emissary of France stood still, silenced by failure. Then he said, simply in English, ‘Be it so,’ and making the proper obeisance of courtier to Emperor, waited for the approach of the white and black eunuchs, and, in their grip, moved back from the audience.

  It was finished. Outside the kiosk d’Aramon and his six gentlemen moved in order behind him, and in turn the servants and staff, Gaultier and Onophrion Zitwitz, until once more the cortège was complete. With a rustle of plumes, a bending and unbending of colour, a flashing of jewels, the ranks of the Household saluted them. The Gate of Felicity opened, and led by the Chiaus Pasha, in silence, the Ambassador’s column filed out, the gates closing behind them.

  Still in the court of the Divan, the Janissaries and Spahis stood silent; the robed officials gathered under the canopy bowed as they moved past; the shadows of the cypress trees lay like bars on the paving and the willow-fronds danced.

  The Gates of the Ortokapi opened, and closed.

  Outside were their horses; the bright-harnessed mares from the Sultan, held ready for mounting, and the vast horse-parade of the Janissaries with company after company drawn up, their salute like a wave of the sea. The Sublime Porte, the great doors to the Topkapi Seraglio, opened, and closed, and the Ambassador of France, his head high, his eyes seeing little, rode out into the dust and the stench and the noise of Constantinople.

  21

  Constantinople: The Meddah

  Many years later, understanding it all, the Baron de Luetz, who survived, used to tell how that day they left the Sublime Porte to the measure of the Chorea Machabaeorum, the Danse Macabre, the Danza General de los Muertos. They stepped from the high throne of Suleiman the Magnificent, and under the dark aegis of Gabriel.

  Lymond knew it. He acted through the whole elegant masquerade: rode to the shores of the Golden Horn and, taking his leave of his escort, crossed it and remounting climbed the packed streets to the Embassy with metallic precision: careless of the amazed and whispering tongues and the curious glances from those in his train. As they rode side by side through the shops and buildings of Pera, d’Aramon, unable further to govern his temper, burst into low speech. ‘I thought you a man of honour, professing to hold me in friendship. You told me you had an honourable petition to present. I have heard you present a tissue of lies, prostituting the name of France to gain your own ends. I cannot hope that you have considered the figure I shall cut, returning home after a lifetime of service, of knotting this friendship between Turkey and France. I have stood by today and seen a rogue snap it asunder.’

  Lymond’s face remained schooled to a hard kind of patience. He said, ‘France will disown me: you will not suffer. Give me a few days only, until I have the Sultan’s final reply. Then you may repudiate me.’

  The crowd pressed in. The Baron de Luetz smiled and nodded, his face livid, and a moment later went on, in the same low, sharpened tone, ‘You already have his reply. He has refused.’

  ‘I have his public reply. He is concerned to keep his new Vizier’s loyalty, and less to fulfil a problematical demand from the French. I have offered him another way, if he esteems it at all worth the trouble.’

  How much had those diamonds been worth, in the casket sent to Roxelana Sultán? With justice the Sultan might, if he chose, tell his Vizier that Roxelana, pleased by the jewels, had let it be known that she wished to keep them, and to return the boy and the maiden instead. He might even claim, if he wished, that his wife had ordered their release without his, Suleiman’s, knowledge. The Baron de Luetz said, harshly, ‘You plot well. Perhaps you will even succeed, with so many innocents dragged in to your aid.’

  Lymond turned in the saddle. Light on the reins, his jewelled gloves were held low and half-curled before him. The snowy fields of his ermine, spread round him fold upon fold, were spiky with damp; and sweat misted all the spare planes of his skin. He said—and there was savagery in the soft voice—‘The Devil is Graham Malett’s already. Who is left, their riper age rotten in all damnations, but the innocent?’

  The blood came coursing down the hill towards them just after that: smooth as rosewood in the white dust. Between the doorposts, on the Embassy’s high wrought-iron gates, they found the dismembered bodies of the Ambassador’s porters, carved hot like young lamb, and spitted there among the dark flowers.

  It was the beginning: the first of the unholy incidents which none could explain: for which no culprit could be found, although the Sublime Porte, expressing unqualified horror, tripled the Embassy’s cordon of Janissaries and agreed by return to Lymond’s formal request that all his staff might henceforth carry weapons.

  Weapons did not save those who died when the well water was poisoned; when a wall collapsed in the yard of the kitchen boys; when a carter going for hay was half flayed and blinded, and a sewing woman taking bread to her family was drowned in her own half-empty cistern. Food failed to come, or was rotten. Servants from outside, frightened, no longer arrived, and those within, afraid to go out, quarrelled and wept.

  It was Francis Crawford, taut and careful, who pulled them together like the children of a beleaguered city and taught them the rules they must follow for their own self-defence. He forced from the Sublime Porte still more Janissaries, and a modest chain of supplies from their benignity to keep the small garrison nourished. The work of the Embassy came to a halt. By the end of a week, and the first morning without incident, hysteria was giving way to antagonism. The new Ambassador had enemies. But for the new Ambassador, none of this nightmare would have happened. M. d’Aramon was approached.

  His own preparations to leave had been halted: how could he desert his seat and his flock through this horror? He listened to what his people had to say; and went to find Mr Crawford.

  Lymond had been out. His cloak, marked with grime, lay where he had dropped it, and he was standing, as he did not often do now, looking out of the high windows of his room and over the wet roofs of Pera to the grey domes of Stamboul beyond. It was not the first time, d’Aramon knew, that Crawford had left the Embassy, and had succeeded in coming back quite without harm. Alone of the household, it seemed, he could go abroad with impunity or stay at home without mishap. It had been in d’Aramon’s mind to point this out to the uneasy household. Instead, on reflection, he walked into the room and, closing the door, put it to Lymond himself.

  ‘You think I am behind these outrages?’ Francis Crawford had little patience, these days, with trivia: he turned, and kicking the fallen cloak to one side, moved past it restlessly, to his wide desk and back. ‘Why? To force Suleiman to do what I want, in case France blames him for attacking the Embassy? Not very plausible. As it happens, now untenable.’

  ‘Why?’ Sometimes one must be blunt.

  ‘While I was out, a parcel was delivered this morning. It is there.’

  M. d’Aramon followed Lymond’s glance to the desk. On it was merely a long packet, wrapped in white silk. The embroidery was Persian. ‘Open it,’ Lymond said.

  M. d’Aramon knew what it was, even before his fingers felt the filigree of the casket and his eyes were blinded by what lay within. There
was also a letter, signed by Khourrém Sultán and written in a firm hand in very good English. Khourrém Sultán, overturned with the ill fortune which made it impossible for the Ambassador to receive that which was dear to his master, was likewise constrained to return that which would cause her to suffer, daily, a reminder of another’s unhappiness. Close by the seal, someone had inscribed a small, six-pointed star. I’m sorry,’ said M. d’Aramon.

  ‘You needn’t be,’ said Lymond. He returned to the desk and, taking the letter, placed it back in the casket and covered it. ‘Your reign of terror is over. You came just now, I take it, to ask for my resignation. You have it.’

  Into M. d’Aramon’s mind came a memory of a calm voice pronouncing. If my petition is refused … I shall have to use other means.

  He said, ‘You say our reign of terror is over. How do you know?’

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t heard the news?’ said Lymond. The shape of his hand on the casket caught d’Aramon’s wandering gaze. With tension and inadequate food they were all lighter, all blanched like roots in a glasshouse. Francis Crawford said, ‘The vigorous and never successless Suleiman leaves for Scutari today, and thence south. It leaves Graham Malett in undisputed possession. That is why I am resigning.’

  And as d’Aramon continued to look doubtful, Lymond smiled. ‘You don’t understand? The attacks were made in order to force me to leave. While I am Ambassador, it is difficult even for Graham Reid Malett to treat me just as he desires. As a discredited fugitive I shall have no one to avenge me.’

  ‘Then …’ said M. d’Aramon; and gathered firmness. ‘Then you must stay.’

  This time, however briefly, Lymond laughed. ‘I wonder how many men, placed as you are, would have said that. I thank you. But even if I were content to see the members of the Embassy reduced one by one to the graveyard, I can no longer as Ambassador pursue my own object. I have failed to free the two children or kill Graham Malett as an envoy of France. Let us see what private enterprise will do.’

  Onophrion helped him prepare. He would take nothing but the plainest of dress, and a cloak in whose pockets could be carried all else he required. Onophrion gave him a waterbottle, and, overriding protests, a satchel with enough dried food to last several days.

  Alone of the few who knew Lymond was leaving, Georges Gaultier did not go to him that evening to wish him Godspeed. Since the attacks began, Georges Gaultier had kept to his room, and had stared back in hostile alarm when Lymond, only four days before, had laid before him a summons with the seal of the Capi Agha, from the Seraglio. The message, in Turkish, was easy to decipher. A tuning fault had developed in the horological spinet. The presence of M. Gaultier was requested to repair it.

  The usurer’s eyes had tightened on reading. ‘It cannot be so. The spinet was in perfect order when it left here.’

  ‘It is so,’ Lymond had said gently. ‘I arranged it myself.’

  For a long moment, Georges Gaultier stared up at him. Then: ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Then you may repair it yourself.’

  It was then that Lymond, sliding forward a stool, had seated himself softly, saying, ‘I cannot do that, as you know. I am speaking of the safety of Philippa Somerville.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Gaultier. ‘You’re not asking me to stab the Grand Vizier? I am merely to come out with Mistress Somerville in one pocket, and the child in the other?’

  ‘You are merely, at no risk and out of the goodness of your heart, to take a message to Philippa Somerville from me,’ Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny had said.

  And Gaultier’s thin mouth had twisted. ‘Is she my family friend? No. This is where I make my living, Mr Crawford. We cannot all afford to be troublemakers. If you wish to meddle with the Seraglio, ask someone else.’

  The Ambassador had persisted, still quietly. ‘No one else can plausibly touch that spinet save yourself. Or Marthe, if she were here.’

  ‘Then you will have to wait, won’t you?’ had said Georges Gaultier. ‘Perhaps the girl will do it for you. You will, I’m sure, have no qualms about asking.’

  ‘They ask for someone tomorrow. It is at the Seraglio’s bidding: you will be perfectly safe. No one dare touch you.’

  Georges Gaultier grinned. ‘Make my excuses,’ he said. ‘An old wound in my shoulder …’

  ‘Or a new one,’ said Lymond. The blade in his hand was slender, its hilt set with cornelians: above it his eyes were cruel and cold. The dealer hardly felt the featherweight pressure as the steel slid through his tunic and shirt, and then the sting as it touched the soft flesh of his shoulder. His cheeks blanched, he stared up at his tormentor.

  ‘You will do it,’ said Francis Crawford.

  And Gaultier, staring into those unyielding eyes, maintained stubbornly, ‘No!’

  He saw the face above him harden and change. Then Lymond calmly leaned on his knife, driving it slowly through skin, flesh and sinew till Georges Gaultier, his voice piping, his fists ineffectually beating, gave a snort and fainted away.

  Afterwards, the tale had lost nothing in telling, nor had it enhanced Lymond’s popularity with the household. They feared him: they blamed him somehow for every catastrophe, even while granting that but for his skill and providing they would have suffered far more. Since Gaultier was in a sense a man of his own company, the Baron de Luetz had not interfered. But it did not, at bottom, make him any less relieved, in a strange emotion streaked with anxiety, to know that by the morning his self-willed successor would be gone.

  Where Crawford was going, and how he proposed to cross the Golden Horn, at night, without being observed by his enemies was something M. d’Aramon took care not to ask. After dark, there was little legitimate traffic. A few fishing-boats … the dairy-boat drawing its hidefuls of rank butter behind it. He had heard the man Zitwitz making certain inquiries and reporting on them to his master, but he had made no effort to eavesdrop. The less he knew, the better for him and for France.

  By morning, Francis Crawford had gone, and France was without an Ambassador.

  Much later, under wintry skies dove-grey with rain, Jerott Blyth crossed the Bosphorus and landed on the mud flats of Topkhane with his baggage and horses, with six beaver-tails and the folded hide of an elephant, with the garrulous old man called Pierre Gilles and the ichneumon called Herpestes, and with the young woman called Marthe, whose brother feared and ignored her.

  Archie Abernethy was no longer with him. As far back as Chios he had looked from afar at the horses, the boxes, the camels, the golden-haired Marthe and the broad-shouldered, white-bearded man with his pet on his shoulder and had shaken his head. ‘If it wasna the Wooing o’ Jock and Jenny, I’ve heard of nothing to beat ye for gear.’

  ‘We’ve nothing to gain by concealment,’ Jerott had replied curtly. ‘We’re part of the Ambassador’s suite.’ They had found no ship to take them to the Sublime Porte, and Pichón, faced with another overland journey, had left them. Jerott, desperately anxious to make speed to Constantinople, was saddled with Gilles, who took his own time and to whom Marthe adhered, Jerott thought suddenly, like a warder to some elderly captive. And Marthe in turn Jerott would not let out of his sight, although her nearness was misery.

  ‘Aye,’ said Archie thoughtfully. ‘A kistful o’ tin pennies like yon will fairly make the streets rattle. I’ve a mind to make a more modest entry myself.’

  ‘Go as you please,’ said Jerott. ‘You’ll get there quicker. I don’t suppose even Gabriel recognizes you like that.’

  ‘I was thinking as much,’ said the mahout with cordiality. ‘Forbye, I might lay my finger on one of the weans. Better a fowl in hand nor two flying, whichever fowl it will be.’

  ‘Have you money?’ The inexhaustible revenue from Lymond. Give a Turk money with one hand, and he will permit you to pull out his eyes with the other.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Archie, the scarred face composed. ‘And if not, I’ve a trade I can ply. There’s ae matter more. D’ye plan to be sober or wilsum?’

  Jerott’s da
rk face reddened with anger. ‘You may look to your own practices,’ he said. ‘And leave me to mine.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Archie, without undue conviction. ‘For if Mr Crawford is killed, we’ll need all the wit we can muster between us.’

  Archie vanished without the rest of the party’s being aware that he was there. It took Jerott three weeks to retrace his steps to Smyrna and drag his party north, over plains fertile and barren; through streams and by hills and over mountainous roads swept bare by rain into glistening structures of agate and porphyry.

  Sometimes they were fortunate to sleep in a khan, where charity provided them with a modicum: wood, meal, oil, some meat and some bread, and where all, Gilles assured them with resonance, would be accepted, sive Idolatra, sive Turca, sive Judaeus, sive Christianus. For the rest they slept within the mud walls of a village, set in boulders and dirt, its flat roofs terraced with wicker; or a township among dwarf oak and arbutus and chestnut trees, where boar roved wild on the hills and the low ground in summer was feathered with purple spireae.

  They passed fields of cotton and buffalo dragging their rough wheelless ploughs; herds of glossy black Caramanian sheep and a flock of goats, clothing a whole living hillside as they flowed home to the fold, the low sun red and capricious with shadows. Sometimes a windmill. Sometimes an ass-driven waterwheel, its buckets sounding like camel-bells. Once a caravan crossing their path of thirty camels laden with mushrooms. But mostly a silence, broken by the chattering of their mules’ feet on stone and on boulder and the chime of the harness, and the voice of the drivers, lazily: ‘Gel! Gel! Gel!’ … Hurry, while over their heads eagles and ravens floated and vanished.

  The roads were plain; and with their guides and their drivers and their Janissaries they were well protected. But this time they were thrown more on their own resources than before: their fellow travellers were evanescent and few: for audience, for entertainment, for sympathy, they had only themselves.