Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Gilles knew them all. Here was the Forum of the Bull: there the house of Concordia and the Temple of Thomas the Apostle. Under this plain the hot baths of Honoria and the Forum of Theodosius. There the baths of Achilles, which Justinian making the aqueduct remembered, and whose conduits he was able to use, so well in those days were the pipes and passages recorded, leading the great underground network of water to the city’s cisterns and fountains and baths. There, still standing, the historied column made by Arcadius, a hundred and forty feet high, with its spiral banded design celebrating the victory over the Scythians; and here the column, now pinned with iron and broken with fire, which once held the statue of Constantine Helios, whose sunny nimbus was framed by the nails that had pierced Christ on the Cross.

  The rain had swept most people from the streets. Men went by barefoot, their burdens strapped to their heads, their splashed skirts kilted up to their calves: children played: a laden buffalo pressed by, and a tripe-seller’s donkey. Few beggars, for the crowded almshouses of the Mehmet Mosque took care of charity, loi, foi, nation que ce soit. Instead, sometimes, the crumbs of a rude justice: the bones and flesh of a criminal staked outside the house of the injured; or the cry, Yâ Fattâh! from the pavement where a paralytic crawled for his living. They turned a corner, into a street which was little but a quarry of broken stone and mud, with houses set like playing blocks in the dirt; or sometimes huddled two or three together among a scattering of winter bushes from which broken marble glimmered, the vestiges of some Byzantine palace or church.

  Outside the biggest house, a square whitewashed structure with a rough wall enclosing a yard, Gaultier stopped, and the procession of packmules behind him. ‘Here?’ said Jerott, astounded.

  ‘It is not easy,’ said Georges Gaultier with asperity, ‘for a foreigner to obtain premises in Constantinople. Until I can find something better: here.’ Marthe did not look round, but he had the impression she was smiling. Then Gaultier opened the gate, and they moved inside and unloaded.

  Such was the briskness of the whole operation, that within an hour Jerott found himself, deep in thought, on his way back to Pera again. From the little he had seen, Gaultier’s house was as unprepossessing inside as out.… The walls were plain and plastered; the floors wooden and uneven; the ceilings timbered and cursorily painted in a particularly nasty shade of mid-green. Even with the carpets and cupboards and bedding they had brought with them, it would hardly look, Jerott thought, like the Star in Bread Street. The ichneumon had appeared quite distraught.

  Marthe at least had had the grace to thank him, with characteristic irony. ‘Receive the blessings of St Blasius, patron of bones in the throat. It cannot have been a congenial task. After all your admirable sheep-herding from Aleppo: what a pity you won’t be able to guess, in the end, what knavery we are planning.’

  ‘I could have you watched,’ said Jerott, rashly. With her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling, the fine-chiselled face took the breath away.

  Marthe laughed: a true laugh of mischievous pleasure. ‘Do,’ she said. ‘Why not? You might see the ichneumon.’

  She had the door half closed when he said, on a sudden impulse of despair, ‘Marthe … what are you going to do? People die here, you know, for very little. Who will help you?’

  She stood in the doorway and smiled. ‘Who will help me? Myself. What am I doing …? Don’t you remember the jingle?

  Where are you going, pretty fair maid, said he,

  With your white face and your yellow hair?

  That was all she said, and she shut the door, laughing. It took Jerott most of the journey home to find, searching his memory, that he had no recollection at all of the rest. Francis would have known.

  Elsewhere in the city, a number of interesting occurrences took place.

  The blind Meddáh, of whom the boy Ishiq took such good care, continued to make his rounds of the city and to give pleasure to the simpler-minded of her citizens, who found the story-teller quiet, but by no means enfeebled. At night, he was given shelter at the house near the Valens Aqueduct which the Pilgrims of Love shared with their brethren and other friends of the road.

  It was one of these, curled up outside the Mehmet baths preparing to spend a comfortable hour in the ashes, who accosted the Jewess Hepsibah courteously for alms as she came out pink from the apodyterium, her slave behind her with the covered brass bowl on her head holding her linen, her smock and her coverlet. It also held, as everyone knew, the embroidered chaplets and girdles and scarves Hepsibah spread out and sold wherever she went.

  She gave alms, with a loud and not very delicate quip, and received in return the address of a suitable customer whose house was surprisingly near the Valens Aqueduct. There she encountered at least one face she knew; was given rather too much Greek wine and a great deal of gold, and both exchanged news and received a number of instructions. These, on her next appointment at the Seraglio, she carried out.

  Archie Abernethy arrived. Unlike Jerott, he made no production of his entry, but slid in one bright frosty day and made his way to two or three people he had known, long ago, in his chosen profession. Under Suleiman the Magnificent there was no central menagerie: only a collection of beasts kept in temporary confinement in the empty rooms of the half-ruined building called Constantine’s Palace, against the east city wall. The rest were maintained, for the Sultan’s amusement, in the courtyards and sunken arcades of the old Royal Palace, below the walls of the harem.

  Hussein, the Chief Keeper of the Royal Menageries, was an Egyptian: a lethargic man with a paunch who was pleased to see Abernaci, the old Indian friend so light on his feet and so full of boundless vitality, who could spend all day shuttling tirelessly between the two collections; flying out of the city to bargain for fodder and back to arrange the profitable purvey of dung. A man full of ideas.

  Archie reported to nobody: there was really no need. In a matter of days one of the Pilgrims of Love, who had been drifting aimlessly in the region of Constantine’s Palace and other places frequented by animals at regular intervals, came up and slipped the Egyptian twenty aspers, as was the custom, to have a closer look at the beasts. Abernaci showed him round; and they had quite a comfortable conversation. After the visitor had gone, Archie and the Egyptian drank some of the aspers, guardedly, like the old gentleman of the city who shouted before taking wine, to warn his soul to stow itself away in some corner of his frame or leave it altogether, lest it be defiled. Then they went about their business as before.

  Jerott’s trouble was that he had no idea where to report. If Lymond were still in Constantinople, and alive, he was making no effort to contact the Embassy, although surely by now he must be aware that he, Jerott, had come. Of Archie’s movements he was ignorant; and it did not in fact occur to him that he might also have arrived in the city. Instead he set out to apply all his hard-won experience, doggedly, to tracing his leader.

  It was not the simplest of tasks. To begin with, he had to lose the Janissary with whom the Embassy despite his protests persistently saddled him. He did so after a few days, during which he walked the poor man mercilessly all through Pera and Constantinople, sightseeing; getting his bearings. It was during these excursions that the house of Názik the nightingale-dealer came to his notice, and he remembered what Archie had said. The following evening he asked the Janissary’s advice on a matter of entertainment, and was led, with a certain grave camaraderie, across the Golden Horn and into a building, where he paid handsomely for the privilege of forgoing the said entertainment and left by a window, while the Janissary waited patiently below.

  It did not take Jerott long to reach the waste ground outside the Beyazit Mosque, empty now of its slumbering pigeons and the unloading camels and the throngs round the letter-writers and the sellers of sherbet. Hooded and unrecognizable in the long Turkish robes they all wore outside the Embassy, Jerott sat crosslegged under the trees in the Beyazit garden as the lamps lit in the mosque, and the turbaned heads of the tombstones on the
ir narrow white shoulders peopled the grass with queer shadows, and watched the timber house with the aviary under the walls, its lights streaming over the ground.

  Unlike the other houses beside it, the house of Názik came to life in the evening. People came and went in the grey, fading light, and he could hear children’s voices, and a raucous cry, often repeated, of some large corvidian bird. Once a dog howled and was silenced, sharply, with a blow.

  Jerott slipped nearer as it grew darker. Far above his head, the voice of a muezzin called in its minor key from the minaret: long, slow notes broken by three or four more of a quick appoggiatura; blending into strange chords as other, distant voices took up the call. Already the space round the square had become a path for dark figures moving into the mosque. Soon, after their ablutions before the silver spouts of the fountain, they would kneel inside on the soft carpets as he had seen them, before the carved wooden minber and the candles thick as a man, in their heavy brass sticks. Pale soles in couples, shining in a carpeted gloom, filled with the fluttering movement of backs bowing and straightening; and the sound of many voices, made small by the echoing space but still sharp and attacking, like the muted arguments of men in a bazaar. The sky was Prussian blue, the trees blue-black around him.

  Across in the nightingale-dealer’s house, two shadows among many, a man and a small child, emerged and were lost in the darkness. Jerott got to his feet. Where? Yes.… There, downhill, where the ruins of some ancient building glimmered in the stray lamps, the rows of windows framing the indigo sky. A man and a child: a child from whose hair the lamplight struck sudden gold: whose walk was too slow for the man, who paused suddenly and, bending, swung the boy up on his shoulders.

  He was too far away to distinguish properly their shape or their features. Suddenly the shadows closed on them utterly, and Jerott, soft-footed, started to run.

  The hands which closed on his shoulders came from nowhere and were many. Silently he fought, and at first with success: his strength they had not expected, nor his profound expertise in the matter of hand-to-hand fighting. They did not call; but he felt one man go down with a gasp and another grunted and fell back as he hit him. But there were more, coming on undeterred, and although he was a courageous man and a good soldier, Jerott could not handle them all. He went down, cursing the absence of companions and weapons and even the absence of the Janissary, provided so carefully with this very contingency in mind.

  Except that these did not appear either casual cut-throats or robbers. Silent as they had been from the beginning, they pulled him to his feet, holding him in spite of all the force of his body, and having tied his hands and gagged his mouth, swiftly under his hood, marched him between them into the darkness after the man and the child.

  The house they took him to was downhill, and not far away: just before they dragged him inside he saw the ghostly arches of the aqueduct straddling the sky. Then the door slammed behind him and he was thrust into a small room where a young man with long hair and silver bells on his ankles and sash looked at him searchingly. ‘Untie him, and take his cloak off. Ali, thou hast suffered?’

  Ali, with a burst nose, had suffered. Jerott said, in indignant French, ‘I have suffered too. Is this Turkish hospitality: to set on a foreigner?’

  The boy with the bells, he was rather worried to see, was suddenly all attention. ‘A foreigner? Thy name?’

  ‘A guest,’ said Jerott awfully, ‘of the Embassy of France. Whom you will be kind enough to inform of my presence. My name is Jerott Blyth.’

  ‘Ah …’ said the youth with the bells. And turning gracefully, waved to Jerott’s captors. ‘It is well. You may depart.’

  ‘But——’ said he of the burst nose.

  ‘… in Love,’ said the youth gently. There was a shuffling, but that was all. Jerott’s attackers filed out, reluctantly, and shut the door behind them.

  ‘Well?’ said Jerott.

  ‘I was told I should meet thee,’ said the other man thoughtfully. The lustrous, long-lashed eyes surveyed the splendour before them: the black hair and flushed, high-nosed face; the muscular body. ‘My name,’ he added after a moment, ‘is Míkál.’

  Jerott, running a hand through his disordered hair, dropped it and stared back. He knew about Míkál. The Pilgrim of Love to whom Archie had entrusted Philippa, and who had abandoned her at Thessalonika, with the result, incredible though he still found it, that both she and the child were now in Topkapi. Míkál who had joined Lymond’s ship, following, and had gone with Lymond to the Beglierbey’s house where Salablanca had died and he had so nearly been murdered as well.…

  Speaking of it, Onophrion had drawn no conclusions, but Jerott had plenty. He said sharply, ‘What have you done with the child?’

  ‘Ah: thou hast seen him,’ said Míkál. ‘He is safe. More: he will return to Názik’s house shortly. We have paid only for part of the night. Thou shalt thyself watch him depart.’

  ‘I’ll see him now,’ said Jerott. He had nothing with which to enforce the demand: only the power to dominate: a soldier and a knight over a pilgrim of love trailing bells.

  Míkál smiled. ‘We have swerved from courtesy,’ he said, ‘in our welcome. This I regret. There is a saying: Night is the stranger’s. Thou wilt sit and feast with me of pigs endorred and flampayne powdered with leopards, and like King Solomon’s great bird the hoopoo, thou shalt tell me thy secrets.’

  Jerott merely repeated it. ‘I want the child now.’

  ‘There is a saying,’ said Míkál with composure, ‘Chi pecora sifa, il lupo se la mangia. Make of thyself a sheep, and the wolf will eat thee. Alas, I am no sheep. As to the child’s presence, I say God will give. I offer thee meat in many dishes instead.’

  Jerott said, gently, ‘Did you hear what I said? I want the child here, now. Or I shall break every little, shell-like bone in your body.’

  Míkál considered him. From his flesh Jerott smelt jasmine and sensed the faint shiver of bells. Míkál said, ‘Threats are as froth in the mouth of the camel. Set aside thy vehemence and thy choler. The child is now in the care of his father.’

  Jerott’s reaction was instant. But even so, Míkál was at the door of the small room before him, hands outspread barring his exit. ‘Patience! Wouldst thou uncover thy master like a plant which the wild ass digs up with its hoof?’

  Jerott Blyth placed his palms on the door on either side of the Geomaler’s head, and staring into the beautiful face said with clarity, ‘If Mr Crawford is here, I want to see him. Immediately.’

  Tilting back his head, Míkál raised his eyebrows. ‘There is no barrier. I shall take thee myself. Only, one chooses the hour when one calls on an opium-eater.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Jerott took down his hands. He said, ‘Are you speaking of Lymond?’

  ‘I speak of Mr Crawford thy friend, the child’s father,’ said Míkál. ‘To take the poppy in old age or in childishness is a paltry thing, not uncommon. To take it in the flower of manhood, like a she-pig with an itch in the belly—this is melancholy indeed.’ And as Jerott, his brows drawn, stared at him speechless, Míkál added swiftly, ‘Dost thou believe I defame him? Follow then, and observe.’

  There was no one in the passage when Míkál opened the door. He took Jerott to the upper part of the house: through two darkened rooms, and came at length to a curtain which hung before a lit doorway. There he stopped and, lifting one delicate hand, drew the edge of the hanging aside so that Jerott without being seen could look into the room.

  The light within, which seemed so bright after the darkness, was only the soft flicker of candlelight, and the jewel-like glow of a brazier set on the carpeted floor and from which the faint, pleasant smell of sandalwood stirred. To one side, his hair bright as the embers, a child played with a handful of shells, sitting straight-backed arranging them between his bare legs; squirming sleepily on his stomach to prod them into rows, his thin white shirt rucked up around him. Even in that light Jerott could see the bruising marks o
n his thighs: spreading blossoms of purple and yellow which disappeared under the cotton. The boy’s eyes were sunk with fatigue and he was not clean, although he had been washed superficially, and the tunic was fresh. But the profile was quite unmistakable. It was the child Jerott had last seen in the arms of a Syrian silk-farmer in Mehedia, his saffron hair hung with blue floss, his eyes black with terror.

  There was no fright on Khaireddin’s face now. It was almost without expression indeed as he concentrated on his shells, moving them slowly from one design to another on the carpet beneath him. But there was something visible: something not quite a smile: a kind of secret awareness that rested in all the curves of the baby face with its dark, swollen lids. Then Jerott saw Francis was there too.

  Quiet as the child, he was stretched, half-sitting, half-lying on the rim of the candlelight, his weight on one elbow; his hands loosely entwined. Jerott had the impression he had been speaking. A moment later he realized he was speaking at intervals, in soft, disinterested Turkish, the words drifting in and out of a leisurely silence. The boy gave no sign: bent over his play, he might have been alone in the room. Only one could sense that he was happy, and listening.

  There was nothing casual about the blue eyes fixed on the down-bent blue gaze of the child. Francis Crawford’s face in this fleeting moment of privacy was filled with ungovernable feeling: of shock and of pain and of a desire beyond bearing: the desire of the hart which longs for the waterbrook, and does not know, until it sees the pool under the trees, for what it has thirsted.

  Jerott’s throat closed. He made to move backwards and was stopped by Míkál’s hand on his shoulder and Míkál’s soft voice in his ear. ‘Now dost thou believe?’ And reluctantly, Jerott looked again at that motionless, gentle-voiced speaker and saw this time something different: the eyes which were too blue, and the shadows which were too dark; a toning and tension of skin which was subtly absent. The face of a man, as the Geomaler had said, living on drugs.