Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Then Míkál ripped back the curtain.

  Lymond sprang to his feet, his face horrifying in its change to stark fury. The child gave a whimpering gasp and crouched, shivering, where it knelt, its head tight in its arms; all the neat patterns of shells tumbled sideways. Exposed helplessly on the threshold, Jerott found his mortification swept aside in a surge of answering rage. He said. ‘Poor bloody bastard: he hasn’t a chance, has he? Kicked from cradle to whorehouse; his mother slaughtered by Gabriel, his father propped up by opium.’

  ‘Get out,’ said Lymond. His voice shook: whether with reaction or rage or opiates hardly mattered. Jerott had never seen him so uncontrollably angry. ‘Get out and stay out, you blundering sheep.…’

  ‘Try and keep me,’ said Jerott, his face white, and swung on his heel.

  ‘Wait,’ Lymond ejaculated. He took two steps forward and stopped, his eyes still wild with anger. ‘What else have you done? How did you find me?’

  ‘He followed the child,’ said Míkál deprecatingly. Jerott, shouldering past him, did not reply. He was half-way across the dark room on his way out of the house when the curtain behind him was ripped off completely and his own shadow sprang up before him, black on a lit square of light. He paid no attention. He flung the second door open, his left hand on the doorpost. There was a flash, and a spark arched through the dark and stayed, quivering, between the spreadeagled fingers of his left hand.

  It was Lymond’s knife; thrown by Lymond, who following it noiselessly and almost as fast stood now behind Jerott and said viciously, ‘Opium or not, I can still throw a knife. Next time it will be through the thick of your hand. ‘Turn and go back.’

  Seen close at hand, the pupils of both his eyes were like pinpricks. ‘To hell with you,’ said Jerott, and snatched at the knife. Lymond’s long fingers, streaking past, got there just before him. Then the knife was gone, flung across the length of the room and Jerott’s right hand was dangling, numbed by a blow on the wrist.

  Turn and go back,’ said Lymond, his face livid still. That house was watched. This house will now be watched. Míkál, you are a fool. Had you waited, you would have discovered he is besotted over a woman. Go and find out, if you can, whether Mr Blyth has been followed. Jerott, get into that room.’

  Míkál’s immense eyes were appealing; his manner placatory. He said, ‘Efendi … the child is due back to Názik in five minutes.…’

  Lymond stopped dead. For a moment he stared at Míkál, then very slowly he turned and walked back to the threshold of the candlelit room, and moved a little inside. Jerott followed.

  The child was crouched in a corner, as far away as he could reach. He had been weeping, but silently. When his client came in—his client who had thrown a great knife—Khaireddin rose, his nose red in his waxen white face with the great rings round the distracted blue eyes. He rose and, walking shakily over to Francis Crawford, reached up and stroked the hand which had thrown the big knife. Then holding it in trembling hands, his eye sideways, he laid it against his wet cheek. ‘Beautiful Hâkim: give me thy kisses.… ’

  He stopped gasping as the man’s hand was wrenched back from his small ones; and began to sob helplessly, without looking up. ‘I am good,’ said Khaireddin. ‘Oh, I am good. I will eat. I have stopped being naughty. Give me kisses, Hâkim.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Jerott; and turned his back. He knew Lymond was kneeling. He heard him take a long, soft breath and expel it; and then take another. With that he spoke to the child, his voice low but level and friendly. ‘Thou art good. Men quarrel, and are friends. Thou and I are friends without quarrelling.…’

  Jerott looked round. The child, level with the kneeling man, had moved nearer, his eyes wide, his face uplifted as if to embrace him. Before he could touch him, Lymond rose, and, looking down, smiled. ‘Keep thy kisses. Thou art almost a man; and a man chooses to kiss only the persons he loves. Then thy kiss will be a big gift indeed.… It is time to go. Míkál’s friends will go with thee.’

  ‘I am good?’ said the strained treble.

  ‘Thou art good,’ said Francis Crawford in a dry voice; and looking up, watched as Míkál slipped from the doorway to take the tired child away.

  ‘There was no one,’ said Míkál briefly. ‘He has not been seen. Come, Khaireddin. It is time to say goodnight to the dark.’

  The far door with its splintered frame closed softly behind them, and their footsteps could be heard moving through the other dark rooms. Lymond did not move or speak. Jerott, behind him, dropped suddenly on the worn cushions and holding his face hard in his hands, said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are sorry now,’ said Lymond without expression. He turned, his face stiff, and stood looking at Jerott. ‘Now that you have seen him. He has been living like this, and suffering like this since he was born. That is why I am here. For that, and to kill Gabriel,’

  Jerott dropped his hands. He said in a low voice, ‘Why did you let him go back?’

  Lymond continued to look at him. ‘He is watched. We are not ready for him to disappear yet; only for him to know us and trust us. There are others to be made safe.’

  Jerott’s dark face was lined. ‘Philippa, in the harem? Francis, what can you do? And who else? You can’t mean Gabriel’s child? That was your son, man, who went out just now. That was the child Kedi nursed; the one I found with the silk-farmer. What better proof do you want? That and his looks … and his guts.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lymond. ‘If that is a compliment.’ He turned round, and finding a chest by the brazier, sat on it. ‘As it happens, I’ve seen the other child too. There is nothing to choose between them, for looks or anything else. The other is under Gabriel’s shadow as well.’

  ‘But Kedi,’ said Jerott, aghast. He tried again. ‘It is known that Kedi brought up your baby. Every independent scrap we know confirms that. And Kedi was with this child, Khaireddin, when I found them. The babies could not have been changed before that without Kedi knowing.’

  The fire had gone from the blue eyes: only a tired irony showed there. ‘What did you promise Kedi?’ said Lymond. ‘What future did you paint for her and the child, once you had rescued them? Freedom, comfort and happiness; no more whippings and misery. She would have called the child Jesus of Nazareth if she thought that was the infant you wanted.… Of course she would know, none better, if Joleta’s child had been substituted for the one she had cared for. But she wouldn’t necessarily admit it. That was why she was killed. As for Philippa’s child, there is no proof there either. Joleta’s baby was taken when young to Dragut, and returned to the House of Donati many months afterwards. Whether it was the same child or not, no one, it seems, can now say. Children alter. Joleta is dead, and Evangelista Donati and her brother.… Does it matter? Should it matter which child is which? What would your Grand Master say, Jerott?’

  Jerott looked back, his grey gaze heavy and straight. ‘I should not like to give my life for any child of Joleta and Gabriel.’

  Lymond said curtly, ‘No one expects it of you.’ But he added, ‘Would you stand back and watch that child suffer and die? No? Then I promise you, whatever its parentage, you could not do it either for the boy they call Kuzucuyum.’ And surprisingly, considering the dark face of the man at whom, in cold blood, he had thrown his long dagger such a short while before, Lymond laughed. ‘A sentimentalist to make troubadours flinch. You didn’t answer my question.… It doesn’t matter. Tell me your news.’

  In essence the story was easy to tell, if you omitted everything of substance about your visit to a tekke of Bektashi Dervishes in Aleppo, and your subsequent suspicions of a beautiful woman called Marthe. Of the kinship between Marthe and Lymond himself, Jerott said nothing. He talked at length about Gilles and his encounter with Archie at Chios, and he gave an account finally, if a brief one, of the house Gaultier had taken south of the Bezestan to share with his niece Marthe and Gilles. Lymond chose to question him in some detail about that, and about the relationship between Gaultier
and Gilles. On Marthe, he spared Jerott’s feelings. Or perhaps, reading between the lines, he guessed more than he wished to put into words.

  At any rate, as Jerott ceased, Lymond said, ‘Laudable, Jerott. It wasn’t an easy assignment. I should apologize too for what happened just now.… It was partly Míkál’s mischief and partly anxiety. It would have caused so much damage had you been followed.’

  ‘And partly opium?’ said Jerott.

  For a moment Lymond thought, studying him. Then he said, ‘I think you should try to put that out of your mind. You will see me taking it quite often. So long as I do take it you will not, I think, notice much difference. I am not using it to escape my responsibilities, if that was what mainly exercised you. But I should be indebted if you would keep what you know of it meantime to yourself. It will, I suppose, be all too obvious one day, but there is work to do first. Archie is here, and will help.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Jerott said.

  Lymond changed his position, with care, and clasped his hands round his knees. ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. You don’t suppose you can do it on your own?’ said Jerott. ‘What can I do?’

  Lymond grinned. ‘When the clay for thee was kneaded, as they say,’ he remarked, ‘they forgot to put in common sense. You may sit there while they bring something to drink. Then you may listen.’

  Unsuspected, Jerott left half an hour later, to join his Janissary and make his staid journey home. Back in the house by the aqueduct Lymond walked slowly through to his chamber, and opening the shutters, stood there for a long time looking at nothing, until he found Ishiq’s face at his elbow.

  ‘And in the night, give Him glory too, and at the setting of the stars,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You don’t understand me, but I am only, like Khaireddin, saying goodnight to the dark.’

  Shortly before this, Philippa Somerville was debarred from the Sultana’s rooms.

  They had discovered, she supposed, that the Pearl of Fortune was none other than the English girl for whose return the French Ambassador had petitioned. A week or two earlier, and it might have mattered, but by then she had already begun taking lessons, in the harem, from Hepsibah the Jewess. She had learned how to dress her hair with jewels and ribbons, unaided: how to trim her nails so that they grew oval and shapely. She learned to embroider, picking up irregular threads in a weave as fine as the eye could distinguish, and marshalling them into a hazy garland of violets and peonies, each stitch even; each design impeccable inside and out. She embroidered slippers for Kuzúm, and veils whose edges were fronded with carnations and jasmine, cut out and skilfully sewn. She learned how to pick a lock with a hairpin, and how to melt off a seal.

  Philippa had quite a lot of news, in those early days, to pass on through Hepsibah to Francis Crawford. There were letters, if you knew where to look for them, from Gabriel to Roxelana Sultán, and from Rustem Pasha, the Grand Vizier with the army. There were snatches of talk overheard between Gabriel and Roxelana. There was evidence, finally, incontrovertible, that the supposed sedition of the Prince Mustafa against his father and his father’s Grand Vizier had been something fabricated by Rustem Pasha, by Gabriel and by Roxelana, the mother of the Sultan’s next heir. And that the chain of events which led to the death of Mustafa at the hands of the Sultan was due to them also.

  At home in Flaw Valleys, Philippa had seen plenty of violence: had watched Flaw Valleys overrun by its enemies, and her father ride out again and again to come back with half of his company: the rest dead men tied to their saddles. Intrigue and sudden death had been the stuff of government in her country as long as she could remember. But this was the first time Philippa herself had brushed shoulders with it: had been forced to take it by the diseased hand and use it for her own ends.

  She was frightened. Dealing with Hepsibah she used a bright, matter-of-fact tone which covered her nervousness. She was shocked by the Jewess’s tranquillity. She knew—probably everyone knew—that in order to make himself Sultan, Suleiman’s father had strangled two brothers and five of his nephews. But at least the guilt was on his own head. The tragedy had been re-enacted by this Sultan through no fault of his own, but the machinations of Roxelana, his lover and helpmeet.

  Nor to Philippa’s direct mind was it clear how this information could benefit Francis Crawford. No single man, and a foreigner already suspected at that, was going to overthrow the three most powerful people in the Empire next to Suleiman himself with any ease, whatever the proofs. Likelier by far that to keep his love and his pride, the Sultan would declare the proof forged, whatever his private misgivings, and would throw their accusers instead to the lions. It was not her business, however, to say as much to Hepsibah. Since Lymond had asked for it, she passed on as much as she knew; and waited, her stomach turning, for what the rest of the winter would bring.

  Of Kuzúm, she now saw much less; and in that, sickeningly, she saw Gabriel’s hand. Once she heard him calling, ‘Are you there, Fippy? Come out to Kuzúm?’ and heard his treble explain, after a space, ‘I need to waiting for Fippy to come out.’ He had run out of the courtyard and up the harem steps to discover her, but when she got there he was gone. The head nurse said he was at his lessons, but she could not discover what lessons she meant. Unless the grovelling ritual whose traces she had seen, for the first time, on the day of the Ambassador’s visit.

  When she did see him he looked pale, but although he said little, he sat very close. He had also begun to lean more on Tulip: perhaps, thought Philippa drearily, he felt a child near his own age less likely to betray him. She heard Kuzúm scolding him sometimes, over the wall: That a too much mouthful, Tulip.’ At least, that way, he was keeping his English. She knew the nurses had orders to talk nothing but Turkish to him now. The shepherd clutch thee fast: the wolves are many, said the words of Jelál, ringing all day in her head. O my black lamb, O my black lambkin, heed me!

  Then she was summoned to the rooms of the Sultan.

  It happened on a Thursday, the day Hepsabah usually came, and worried her at first as she was expecting a message from Lymond. She stared at Kiaya Khátún, her mind busy, and only slowly realized what Kiaya Khátún had in fact said. The rooms of the Sultan.

  But the Sultan was now in Aleppo. She opened her mouth, but Kiaya Khátún forestalled her, the dark Greek face placid. ‘You ask yourself, why the Sultan’s apartments? I answer that it is a State ceremony. You are fortunate in being chosen to share it. I have told the Mistress of the Baths and the Mistress of the Wardrobe to prepare you. When they have done we shall see, I trust, the harvest of these our long labours to lead you to ripeness and beauty. When you are ready, they will lead you to the Golden Road and a eunuch will come for you.’

  In the baths, although they giggled and shrieked and conjectured, the other girls had no idea what was going to happen. To some of their suggestions she closed her ears, although she made jokes, as best she could, while they sluiced and scrubbed and anointed her; a different scent for each foot of her body. She knew them all now. Only a few were spiteful. Most were cheerful before what they felt somehow must be her good fortune, and only a little envious of the stiff marten trimmed robe they slipped over her head, and the three thousand crowns’ worth of pearls bound in her thick, shining hair. Her pattens were inlaid with mother of pearl and with silver, and her little cap was edged with seed pearls and topped with a worked plaque in silver. She was not given a veil. Then they took her to the Golden Road.

  She waited there perhaps ten minutes, her negress smiling behind her. It was narrow and carpeted, and dark in spite of the small silver lamps on the arcaded walls and the most beautiful faience in the world: tomato red, scarlet and coral, thick-laid on a flawless white ground.… Dear Kate, thought Philippa as the smell of mutton reached her, sickening, from the apartments above, I am robed and waiting to be taken to the Sultan’s apartment. I wish I had paid either more attention or less to my instructors. I wish I knew what was happening. I wish I were at home.<
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  A voice in her brain, more than erratic in its grasp of adult phraseology said, I need to waiting for Fippy. An invisible pen in her mind, hovering over her invisible diary, reread the last entry and, stoutly, scored through the ultimate sentence. She had asked Lymond for money, through Hepsabah. So soon as she had it, she could at least ensure that, outwith Gabriel’s eye, Kuzúm would be fairly well treated. What might happen to Kuzúm under Gabriel’s direction was a different matter. But while she could influence his fate, her place was here, and not at Flaw Valleys.…

  She followed the eunuch, when he came, along the Golden Road, beside the big courtyard and between the suites of the khátúns and the harem mosque and past another courtyard to the big door which gave on to the selamlik terrace, with its fountains and pool. There the eunuch turned left, and almost immediately halted outside a bronze door, surrounded by marbles.

  Inside, Philippa knew, was one of the smaller reception rooms. Outside, dressed in bright coral satin, were two of the royal tressed pages, their painted eyes oval as eggs. The eunuch bowed, and one of the pages, with an answering salute, consulted briefly within and then returned and held open the door. The eunuch stepped back and Philippa, trailing amber brocale and well-massaged hauteur, drifted inside.

  On one side, against marble and eyeleted wainscotting, stood the Kislar Agha, the head of the harem. On the other, broad as Zeus in plumed turban and flowering velvet, sat Graham Reid Malett. Jubrael Pasha. Gabriel, himself. The door closed behind her.

  Lying back, his elbows in cloth-of-gold cushions, Gabriel inspected her. The face wearing that cursory smile hadn’t changed in all the months since last she had seen him in the cathedral in Edinburgh, hardly able, even yet, to understand that all his plans had fallen in ruins; flinging that last, angry challenge at Lymond. The ruddy, fine-shaven skin was the same, and the distinguished brow, and the light blue eyes, large and level and free of all guile. Gabriel said, ‘My compliments, Kislar Agha. The improvement is considerable. Now kindly disrobe her.’