Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Like puppets in a rather poor comedy, the eunuch and the Kislar Agha bowed and advanced. Philippa’s heart gave a single loud report and began pattering like a mouse on a tow-line. She said acidly, ‘The Sultan won’t like it.’

  Gabriel looked at her, finding the interruption mildly distasteful. He said, addressing her for the first time, ‘The Sultan, through his wife Khourrém Sultán, has made me a free gift of one of his slaves. My choice has fallen on you.’

  ‘To remind you of home?’ inquired Philippa, Gabriel looked over her head. ‘Take note. Tonight the boy wül have six lashes at bedtime.’ The blue gaze, smiling, slid back to Kate’s daughter again. ‘You object to being exposed?’

  Philippa’s brown eyes were full of surprise. ‘Only when my buttons are stiff. My goodness, who’s going to care when it happens nearly every day of the week and three times on Saturdays?’

  For a moment the blue eyes held hers. Then Gabriel turned and spoke to the Chief Black Eunuch. Then he addressed Philippa softly. ‘The Kislar Agha tells me you are a virgin.’

  ‘Ask the Kislar Agha how he knows,’ said Philippa. ‘Or perhaps you have attended one of our lecture courses?’ She began philosophically, stilling the shake in her fingers, to unfasten the clasps of her outer robe. ‘It’s better with music,’ she said.

  ‘I think you are being impertinent,’ said Gabriel. ‘As it is, the child Kuzucuyum will receive tomorrow a beating of six strokes. On your conduct and compliance will depend all his future wellbeing. When I call for you, you will come. Whatever I demand of you, you will perform. Very soon, Mr Francis Crawford of Lymond will be dead and the poor boy wül have none to protect him but you … the poor boys, I should have said.’

  He smiled, that forgiving, magnificent smile. The eunuchs, at a sign, had stepped back without touching Philippa, and, raising her eyebrows, she proceeded to fasten her over-robe once again, her expression stoic, her knees, unseen, like peeled wicks with relief. Gabriel said, ‘You know, I take it, that there are two claimants to the proud name of Crawford?’

  ‘The other is Tulip?’ Philippa ventured.

  ‘The other is a boy now in Constantinople, found and identified by the energetic Mr Blyth. He also answers to the name of Khaireddin, but whether it is Mr Crawford’s son or another substituted for him in earlier days, no one unhappily can now say. But there is no doubt that one of the two boys is Mr Crawford’s unfortunate by-blow; and one of them, as it happens, is mine.’

  Philippa’s mouth dropped very slightly open. She shut it. ‘How awkward for you,’ she said thinly. ‘What does the other one look like?’

  ‘Let me think,’ said Gabriel. He pursed his lips. ‘Handsome; fair-haired; blue-eyed. No clue there, is there? Attractive. Bright for his age, one suspects, except that we don’t know his age, do we? One must be older than the other by several months, though not more than a year; but one has had a spoiled upbringing and the other a deprived one, so how does one measure growth? Luckily, I have no strongly patriarchal emotions. I do not intend Mr Crawford to have either child. For myself I do not care if I keep one or both or if neither survives. I shall do whatever gives me the greatest personal satisfaction.… It pleases you, I hope, to learn that you have been lavishing your feminine instincts perhaps on that dear child born to Joleta and myself?’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Philippa, ‘if I were impertinent again, your son might receive six other lashes?’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Gabriel gently, ‘it may not be my son, but the son of your mother’s friend Lymond. You cannot depend on it. You will never be able to depend on it.’

  Philippa drew a long breath. It was the longest, most adult duel she had ever faced in the whole of her short life. She did not know what to believe or what not to believe: she only knew that strategy had worked, a bit, in her favour. She hadn’t been stripped. She had given nothing away. She had shown nothing, she thought, of the pain and horror he anticipated from her. She had not afforded him, in fact, the entertainment he had expected.… She must not become a challenge. But she might force him to tire of her. She said, ‘Do I become your slave immediately, Sir Graham, or wait until supper?’

  Gabriel rose. ‘You will stay in the harem long enough, I hope, to mourn Mr Crawford. After that, I have the permission of the Sultana to take you then to my palace, together with whichever child I select. The other will remain in the harem as surety for your most tractable conduct. I shall make it my personal business,’ said Graham Reid Malett, ‘to keep you aware of the course of events. You may return to your rooms for the present.’

  Philippa bowed. The Kislar Agha bowed. The eunuch who had brought her, moving past, opened and stood by the door. ‘Ah,’ said Gabriel.

  Philippa straightened. ‘That reminds me,’ said the Vizier, stroking his nose. ‘You may take a message on your return to Kiaya Khátún for me. Inform her that Hepsibah the Jewess will not be coming today. She has been found in the At Meydan, dead and about to be plundered of a large sum of money. Perhaps the poor woman’s savings. She had no relatives and since the gold was given to me, I have presented it to the two charming children you see guarding the door. They will use it, I fear, only to slip deeper into delightful and improper vices; but what can one do? They are kind boys, as your Kuzúm will discover one day.… Goodbye, my dear Philippa.’

  Dear Philippa bowed and got out. She was sick into a fountain on the way back, and again in the Golden Road. She thought viciously, through an evening of violent shivers, that at least her visit had cost them a new strip of carpet.

  23

  Constantinople: The House of Gaultier

  Very soon after that, on a bright, mild winter’s morning when the birds, deceived, were singing in the plane trees and there was a little green growth in the Embassy garden, Jerott Blyth left, with his bodyguard, to pay an unexpected call on the house of Gaultier, and specifically on his niece, Mlle Marthe. Leaving the Janissary to await him, discreetly, on the dusty waste ground outside, Jerott climbed the single step and banged on the door.

  He had not been back to the house since the day he helped Gilles and the rest to move in. That he was here at all was unknown to Lymond. Sooner or later, Jerott well understood, the matter of Marthe was going to be forced on Lymond’s attention, perhaps even by Marthe herself. Meantime, Jerott Blyth was the last person to anticipate it.

  An old negress opened the door. She was not well versed in Turkish, or indeed in any other language Jerott tried her with: he reached the conclusion, correctly, that she was exceedingly slow in her wits; and for this virtue indeed had been chosen. But when, alarmingly, the dark young man on her threshold showed no signs at all of retreat and, on the contrary, was inching his way steadily into the house, the negress gave up and, bidding him wait, went off into the back of the house.

  He didn’t wait. He had penetrated the first room: as bare as the day they had taken possession, when the door opened and Marthe hurried in. Her long hair, hastily pinned, had allowed some strands to escape and lie in coils against her slim neck, which was dirty. Her gown was not very clean either, but she had pinned a fresh apron on top in his honour.

  She had assumed at the same time no alien courtesy. ‘I have a client,’ said Marthe in that cool, familiar voice which brushed through the nerves. ‘I am afraid you must be brief.’

  ‘My dear lady,’ said Jerott. ‘I shouldn’t dream of detaining you. I have all the time in the world. I shall wait until you have finished.’

  He looked round for somewhere to sit, but Marthe, without moving, said in the same contemptuous voice, ‘I am sorry. We are discussing with him the repair of a harpsichord. It will take a very long time; and then I have another engagement.’

  ‘You are busy, aren’t you?’ said Jerott cheerfully. ‘Uncle too? What a pity. Then I shall just have a talk with Maître Gilles.’

  ‘I am sorry——’ Marthe began; but Jerott, his black eyebrows lifted, interrupted her. ‘He’s busy dissecting the harpsichord?’

&
nbsp; ‘He is out,’ said Marthe curtly.

  Jerott’s eyes were on the shadows behind her. He looked back at Marthe, grinning. ‘Without Herpestes?’ he said.

  It was bluff, but it worked. The girl who was Lymond’s sister turned and, closing the door, returned and sat down, her back straight, on the big tapestried chest which was nearly all the room contained. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘A service,’ said Jerott.

  ‘Lymond has sent you?’ She spoke the name with scorn. Lymond’s Christian name she had never been heard to employ. ‘He doesn’t know I am here.’

  ‘Ah. You have found him, then,’ said Marthe. ‘I imagined you would. He prefers limelight to obscurity, like the Prophet whose wives could find a lost needle by the light of his body. But how rash of you to inform me! Should I not rush to the Seraglio with the news?’

  ‘You might,’ said Jerott. ‘Except that, unlike your brother, I have a feeling that you prefer obscurity to limelight just at present. And also I remember what you did at Mehedia.’

  Marthe smiled. ‘Donna Maria Mascarenhas? Don’t rely on that, Mr Blyth. My uncle and I had to get to Aleppo. I am afraid I have no more services to perform for you or your friends.’

  Standing quietly at the far side of the room, Jerott watched her, his splendid aquiline face grim. ‘You are a human being,’ he said. ‘You know now what Graham Reid Malett is. Neither he nor Francis will rest until one or the other is killed: that is their own affair and not yours. But before that can happen, the children have to be saved. One of them is already half destroyed and the other in the harem has begun to suffer as well. Gabriel is now in complete power, and has arranged to make the Somerville girl his own.…’

  For a moment Marthe was quiet. But when she spoke, there was still contempt in her voice. ‘What do you suggest?’ she said. ‘That I give myself up in their place?’

  ‘I suggest that you go and rewire the spinet,’ said Jerott simply.

  ‘And?’ said Marthe.

  ‘And give Philippa Somerville the one piece of information she needs to enable her and the child to escape.’

  ‘To escape from Topkapi?’ Marthe stared and then laughed. ‘Juste ciel: your minds must have rotted. No one leaves Topkapi, or enters it without permission.’

  ‘You don’t know your brother,’ said Jerott.

  ‘Nor do I wish to,’ said Marthe. She stood up. ‘I tell you for the third time: I do not perform services. Your ingenious master must find another emissary, that’s all.’

  ‘There is no one else now,’ Jerott said. He moved forward until they stood face to face; her head only a little lower than his wide, frowning eyes. ‘It isn’t for Lymond, or for me. It’s for Philippa and the children. You have every excuse to enter Topkapi and no risk to run. In a matter of days after that we shall be all gone except Francis, and whatever the outcome of that, you’ll be left in peace.’

  Her dirty, imperious face was set hard; her eyes cold. ‘I have only to denounce you to the Janissary outside to be left in perfect tranquillity. My answer is no.’

  ‘How much do you want?’ Jerott said.

  The great, the insufferable anger banked behind those brief words struck no answering fury from Marthe. Instead there grew on her face a charming, lop-sided smile; a smile full of irony and small, cruel amusements. ‘More than you have,’ she said.

  He said, ‘Your brother is rich.’

  ‘He has shown me no sign of it,’ Marthe replied. She smiled again. ‘Shall I tell you a small interesting fact? The banker’s orders which paid for this journey, and for the bribes and rewards and gifts it entailed, are now fully withdrawn. There was enough, Master Zitwitz told me, to cover the last weeks at the Embassy, and then, but for their clothes, it was virtually finished. Lymond has no reserves. He has only a second son’s property in Scotland, and an estate in Sevigny, France, and a vagrant mercenary company, whereabouts unknown. You cannot pay me with these.’

  I am good! had cried the small, frantic voice. And Lymond had taken his hand away, holding back every impulse; and had answered him gently, his voice level and schooled.

  Jerott thought of what one man had given, over all the past year; and without removing his gaze from Marthe’s defiant blue eyes he put up one hand and unfastened and flung off his cloak. Beneath, tucked out of sight, was his dagger. He slipped it out of its sheath; tossed it once, glittering in the air, and looked again, smiling, at the pale, dirty face of his hostess. ‘Then,’ said Jerott, ‘I shall pay you with your own coin instead. Lead me, mademoiselle, to your client with the mud-covered harpsichord.’ And as she opened her mouth quickly to scream, he put one capable hand over her face, and twisting her into his powerful grip, dragged her, knife in hand, through and out of the door.

  She was quick-witted and supple, and not without training. But he hurled her like a kitten through the bare rooms and deserted passages of her house, while she bit and scuffled and kicked and tried in vain to free her mouth to scream a furious warning. She fought for his knife and was cut and found in Jerott’s face hard indifference to the blood streaming down her neck and her arm. They burst into the kitchens and the negress, her hand to her mouth, scuttled into a corner and crouched, her breath hissing. Jerott flung open door after door. In one was a tumble of bedding: that of Gilles and Gaultier doubtless. In another he found the neatly rolled mattress and almost clinical orderliness extended to all her possessions by Marthe. Of the two men there was no trace whatever. Nor, needless to say, was there a sign of any mythical client with harpsichord.

  It was then that he let his hand slip and she bit it; and seizing her moment as he snatched it away cursing, she filled her lungs and screamed with all her power. Somewhere, a voice called in answer, greatly muffled; and there was a metallic sound, and a series of regular thumps, clearly approaching; and another sound he could not identify: a low booming, veiled and threatening as the roar of some ravenous animal.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jerott to Marthe; and stood and waited, his hand once more covering her mouth. ‘It seemed time for a short cut. I feel I can deal with friends Gaultier and Gilles without requiring the advantage of utter surprise.… What a pity you couldn’t resist that little poem, you know. I couldn’t solve it, but Francis did, without thinking. He said, if you are at all interested, “Leave her, for God’s sake. She’s welcome to anything she can get.” … Where would you say they are going to come up? The next room, perhaps?’

  He kept his hand over her mouth as he walked her again through the door; but she made no resistance now. Only, as the sounds became definite and close and he was able, smiling that grim smile, to free her entirely, did she say, standing beside him, ‘Why don’t you? Why don’t you leave me then, for God’s sake?’

  But by then the door-handle was turning: the door to a small apartment little more than a cupboard, which Jerott had overlooked in his haste. There was a sudden sharpening of the distant, sonorous noise. Then it opened, and Georges Gaultier burst through, a spade in his hands.

  Jerott had respect for a spade; but very little for Georges Gaultier. It was Marthe who nearly tripped and disarmed him on his lunge forward: with a twist, Jerott recovered his balance and handed her off with a painful grip of one hand, as with the other he sank a blow deep in the little man’s stomach. Gaultier retched and collapsed, the spade clattering to the floor, while Jerott stood and looked down on him.

  He was very dirty. Over his shirt, his neck-strings hanging loose and his sleeves tightly rolled up, he wore a short leather jerkin, rubbed and stained with sweat and water and earth. Below it, long coarse woollen stockings and fustian breeches were also blotched and grimed on their creases: his stub-toed shoes were scuffed and blackened with wet. ‘Are those the hands,’ said Jerott, ‘out of which trusting young harpsichords feed? What, no ichneumon?’

  Gaultier stopped sobbing for breath and said, wheezing, ‘How dare you force your way into this house and assault us?’

  ‘How dare you spring out at me with
a spade?’ said Jerott mildly. ‘Or were you going to work in the garden?’

  ‘Marthe …?’ The usurer struggled on to one elbow and looked a her, but Marthe, walking away, had dropped on to a mattress and was sitting there, her chin in her hands.

  ‘He knows,’ she said. ‘You fool; can’t you even hold a man off with a spade?’

  ‘I don’t want to kill anybody,’ said Gaultier. ‘You let him in. There must be a Janissary outside. You can’t kill a man with a Janissary outside.’

  ‘Not unless you kill the Janissary as well,’ said Jerott. ‘Marthe might, but I doubt if you have the stamina, Gaultier. Suppose you let me into that cupboard instead.’

  Gaultier did struggle to his feet and ineffectually try to stop him, but Marthe stood back, her face frozen. His hand on the doorknob, Jerott gave her back stare for stare.

  ‘Where are you going, pretty fair maid,

  With your white face and your yellow hair?’

  And as she did not answer, he continued himself, his voice soft against the grunts of her uncle, again laid on the floor:

  ‘I am going to the well, sweet sir, she said;

  For strawberry leaves make maidens fair.’

  Then he opened the cupboard door and walked through.

  It was a small room, once adjoining the kitchen, with the remains of some shelving on the white plastered walls, and a smoke-blackened circle where a lamp was accustomed to hang. The floor had been flagged, but some of the slabs had been lifted and piled neatly against the stained walls, leaving in the centre a square hole, perhaps three feet by two, with a caking of stone dust and slime and many wet, muddy footprints marking the edges. From the threshold Jerott looked straight down into the hole. It was very black; but far below, gently moving, there was an impression of water. Flush against the walls of the hole was a worn wooden ladder, scaled and darkened with damp. The roar was very loud now.