Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  In the bottom of the bowl was a screw of paper, half buried by small silver coins. This time Jerott plaintively refused a second donation but, as the bowl was thrust at him a second time and a third, he fished reluctantly in his purse at length, and put in an asper.

  The paper came up, neatly unseen in the palm of his hand. It held only one word in English: Proceed.

  On the other side of the city a Geomaler with a lyre wandered sleepily into Constantine’s Palace and serenaded the lions, until the assistant keeper turned him rudely out. He left behind him a menagerie of restless animals and a small twist of paper on the broken mosaic floor, which the under keeper picked up and kept. Untwisted, it also held the same word in English: Proceed.

  Within the damp, inhospitable walls of Gaultier’s house the owner passed his days nursing his suppurating arm and his useless well both, in a fury of impatience, awaiting his niece’s return. Pierre Gilles, sitting philosophically wrapped in a blanket and endlessly writing up his blurred Latin inventories, had long ago given up reasoned argument; and was all the more glad to see Jerott Blyth’s face when at last he called on them, his Janissary as always outside.

  To Jerott’s story, Gilles responded with a frowning concern: he stared back at the speaker, thinking, while Gaultier exploded into a frenzy of angry demands. The girl had gone to Topkapi; had carried out their part of the bargain. Now it was for Jerott to carry out his. Bring back the boat, so that they could obtain what was theirs. Did he realize how long it would take to empty that chamber and ferry its contents back into the house? If something had gone wrong: if the girl was in trouble: at any moment the Bostanji Bashi’s henchmen might come …

  Gilles cut into it. ‘How long has she been in the Seraglio?’

  ‘Four days,’ said Jerott.

  Pierre Gilles looked at him. ‘Four days without sleep will not improve your chances of aiding her,’ he said dryly. ‘If she requires aid. Does your Ambassadorial friend see something sinister in this delay?’

  Jerott said, ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t allowed it to affect his plans.’

  ‘But you say there is no love lost between them, so he may merely be unmoved by her fate. Yet if he believed her to be detained because of the message she carried, he would surely have altered his designs? If, on the other hand, it was because they have guessed our discovery, we here should surely have been molested by now. There is a strong possibility, it seems to me,’ said Maître Gilles, looking down at the white face of his former secretary, ‘that the young woman has merely been detained, as they claim, in order to restore the clock-spinet?’

  ‘It is possible,’ said Jerott. He added, curtly, ‘It was my fault. Mr Crawford had no idea until I told him that I had sent Marthe with the message.… We can do nothing but wait. I can’t go near Lymond now in case I endanger him.’

  ‘You are watched. Of course,’ said Gilles. ‘So you remain at the Embassy throughout all, fretting. You know, I take it, the expression, “Alter ius non sit, quisuus esse potest?” What, for example, if the girl and the two children are rescued, leaving Marthe to suffer in the Seraglio in their place? Or do you agree this would be just punishment for her misdemeanours?’

  ‘I know the expression,’ said Jerott. ‘At the moment I am another’s, and not my own. What I think doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I see,’ said Pierre Gilles, watching him. He said, after a moment, ‘I believe I should like to meet your friend Mr Crawford.’

  ‘The world is full,’ said Jerott wearily, ‘of people who might have wanted to meet Francis Crawford, and who are going to be disappointed. So, among other things, Marthe has to be expendable.’

  ‘And the treasure?’ said the usurer Gaultier. ‘Is that expendable too?’

  The eyes of Gilles the scholar remained on Jerott’s dark face. ‘Yes. Of course it is,’ he said. ‘We also are being required to wait, and to fret. He has forced you to think, has he, this friend of yours?’

  Herpestes had jumped on his lap. Jerott stroked him slowly, without looking up. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘You and he between you.’

  It seemed like virtue rewarded when, a day later, a page from the Seraglio appeared at the Embassy in the afternoon requiring M. Chesnau to send an official to escort home the Khátún adjusting the spinet, who had suffered a slight breakdown in health. There was no question as to which official should go. Jerott was out of his room, his lined cloak over his arm, as soon as Chesnau told him the news, and was halted only by Onophrion’s great bulk on the threshold, his voice deferential, but his face lined with concern. ‘If Mr Blyth would allow me to accompany him? The young lady may well need attention …?’

  He had thrown together, even in that short space of time, a neat emergency roll including aquavitae and a thick robe, hood and rug. Jerott, his mind busied with confused thought and emotions, was thankful indeed to have conducted for him the practical side of the journey. None was better than Onophrion at obtaining a boatman quickly, or horses at the far side, for themselves and the Janissary, with mules for the two servants bearing his burdens. They left in a matter of moments, and were at the Imperial Gate, the Bab-i-Humayun, inside the hour.

  Onophrion had been before, with Lymond. Jerott, whose first visit it was, had an impression of great spaces filled with men and horses and the tall white caps and blue robes of the Janissaries, walking in groups or marching in small, brisk detachments. Chiausi took them through the first court to the Ortokapi Gate and between the feathered files of the Kapici: in the Divan Court they were greeted by the Bostanji Bashi, who led Jerott alone to the Gate of Felicity.

  They had an affable, if formal, conversation on the way, their voices sounding loud in the strange Seraglio silence. In the gateway, as had happened with the Ambassador, the Bostanji Bashi halted, and directing the way to the retiring-rooms, asked Jerott to wait. He hoped they were looking after Onophrion. Above all, he hoped they would be speedy. For what he knew and they did not was that, before darkness fell, Philippa and both children should be out of the city.

  Only then did it occur to him, stupidly, that Marthe knew that fact, for of course he had told her the details himself, to pass on to Philippa. Which was strongest in that solitary soul: hatred or avarice? Greed, he had assumed, but perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he was here because she had betrayed them.

  The carpet-dealer called late that afternoon at the house of Názik, the nightingale-merchant, and tramped in without knocking to pick up the carpet he had bought earlier in the day.

  Názik was busy and short-tempered, and the interruption was unwelcome. At the same time the dealer, who was new to him and most likely to his job, had offered him four times what he had paid for a Persian prayer-rug, already a little threadbare, under the impression that it was a good deal more important than Názik knew it to be.

  It was a bargain not to be missed. On the other hand, the cage-maker at long last had sent round his man with the two cages Názik had long coveted, and he had just unwrapped the first to find that the door was weak in its hinges. It was in other respects so splendid: so ideal, one would say, for Khaireddin, for example, that Názik could have wept. He caressed the ebony base, inset with ivory and mother of pearl and small simply cut jewels, and hung with tassels of silver and scarlet, all the time he was shouting at the cage-maker’s man, who insisted, wailing, that all cage-doors behaved so.

  It was no use. Clearly the cage was unsafe. He had just ordered the man to cover up the warped thing and take it out of his sight when he had to go and deal with the carpet. When he came back, soothed by the sight and feel of shivering aspers, it was to find the second cage standing in all its glory, even more fine than the first. They haggled for a long time over the price, and then at the last moment Názik balked at handing over the money, and told the man that he would call at the cage-maker’s and pay it. They were in the middle of a second argument over whether or not the cage could be left, if unpaid for, when Názik’s assistant ran in to say that the boy Khaireddin had gone. And
that, as Názik well knew, meant death. Then Názik remembered the carpet-dealer.

  They followed the tracks of the cart, running, through the uneven streets, shouting questions as they went to passers-by who stared and called back. The dealer had talked of leaving for Adrianople, and in fact had started towards the Adrianople gate, before doubling back and through a network of streets which led his pursuers, slowly and surely, towards the Golden Horn and its shipping.

  They found the cart, in the end, with all its piled carpets standing alone on the landing-stage with its mule sniffing at fish-heads: the swarm of small boys who had just reached it and were pulling off the top heavy roll jumped down and scattered at Názik’s breathless approach. It was his carpet they had partly dismantled, and inside was Khaireddin’s small cap; but no other sign of the boy or the dealer at all.

  They searched the waterside till darkness, with the help of those silent men who, day in and day out, had watched every move by the child. Finally, whimpering, Názik went back to his nightingales and began to pack, hurriedly. Míkál, who had come over to buy a few hours of Khaireddin’s time, stayed to comfort him; and also to make quite sure that it occurred to no one at all to follow the cage-maker’s mule, plodding out of the city gate and along the road to the west with a warped silver cage wrapped in cotton and strapped to its pannier.

  In Topkapi, Philippa also was following instructions. That they had come in the first place through Marthe had been an astonishment from which she had not yet recovered. But then, as she wisely concluded, Marthe’s relations with Lymond might well have undergone quite a change in all the months since last she had seen them together. Marthe’s feelings towards herself were still clearly cool. Philippa had watched her leave the selamlik with something very like panic, but she was used to overcoming that particular impulse. It did not cross her mind that Marthe had not immediately left the Seraglio for good.

  Unable to sleep or eat for frightened excitement, Philippa had counted the hours until today. It had been hardest of all, she found, to act normally with Kuzúm. On her actions today depended his whole life and his future: a future of which he had no conception. For surely, no matter what Gabriel had hinted, this and this only was Lymond’s son? She shut her mind to the other, unthinkable possibility and took in hand, firmly, a wet, loose-lipped yearning to smother the child with treacly emotion. She played with Kuzúm that afternoon; scolded him briskly when he blew his nose with his mouth full of yoghourt, and took him downstairs with the other girls of the harem to see the bears fed.

  The elephants were kept at Constantine’s Palace, and the wolves and the lions: the Sultana’s rooms were above the pound at Topkapi, and the Sultana’s sleep must not be disturbed. So there the keeper put the smaller, picturesque animals like lynxes and leopards and ermines in cages; and tethered a brown bear to a stake, with her two cubs humping about her; all upturned toes and high furry bottoms.

  Kuzúm loved the bears. He watched them with a fierce adoration: ‘I see two ones. Kuzúm show Fippy where is the bears.… Kuzúm have a see. Now Fippy have a see. Now Fippy lift up me to see all the pussy cats.… Oh, it’s fallened.’

  It was a leopard, and it had indeed fallen. Philippa took Kuzúm back to the bears, and said to the keeper, ‘One of your leopards isn’t well.’

  The face under the turban was familiar, but he gave her no glance of recognition: only swore under his breath in what she understood to be Urdu, and hurried off to the cage, the chattering girls in their veils following, bright as finches. ‘Is it sick?’ someone asked.

  The little mahout answered in Turkish. ‘It is sick, Khátún. It can be healed in the Palace menagerie. I shall take it there later.’ He answered all of their questions, but his gaze, as always, strayed to Kuzúm. With his blue eyes and thick silky cap of bright hair, the little boy in his Turkish jacket and slippers was as sweet as a peach; his swooping voice striving to fasten together difficult words and impossible phrases, his open laughter and quick, warm affection creating a climate of trade winds and sunshine in which they all basked.

  His own view of the weather was rather more literal. After he had had his fill of the bears and the ermines, and watched the keeper push meat in to the lynxes, accepting a piece of animal biscuit from the mahout in the bygoing, Kuzúm announced suddenly, ‘It’s very too cold,’ and yawned, his pink skin stretched like a carp’s round the O of his mouth.

  ‘You’re tired. We’ll go in a moment,’ Philippa said; and, taking off her own heavy lined cloak, wrapped it round the small boy. The young bears, attracted by the trailing thing on the ground, scampered after him and pawed it, dragging it half off his shoulders, and he rocked and sat down with a bump, his legs stuck out before him. The mahout gave him another piece of biscuit and he held it out for the bears to nibble, absently, before cramming the rest unhygienically into his mouth. Philippa didn’t restrain him.

  When they came to go, climbing chattering up the stairs and through the series of courts that led them finally back to the harem, Kuzúm had succumbed, and the mahout turned the folds of the mohair more closely around him. Philippa climbed the stairs carefully, carrying her small burden all swathed in her cloak: it was not yet time to return Kuzúm to the head nurse so she turned into her own rooms instead and, laying her burden down, got out one of her books and sat looking at it until the bustle had all died down and the girls had gone off, as she knew they would, for their music.

  From this class she was excused. Philippa waited until there was silence, and then, producing a hairpin, crept out into the corridor and proceeded to put into use all poor Hepsibah’s training.

  Khourrém’s rooms were quite empty: today was a religious festival and, in the absence of Suleiman, his wife was at St Sophia, she remembered. Philippa met no one, although she had her excuse ready. She had been summoned by the Sultana to check the offending spinet once more. She saw it as she sped through the great room, stirring like a beast in its sleep, all gold and Badakhshan rubies: it burst into action behind her back as she left, her nerves tight as the wires on the soundboard. She was, she accordingly told herself briskly, precisely on time. She let herself into the small vacant gallery overhanging the compound, and walked to the edge.

  As Archie had said, there was a rope hanging, neatly looped round a column. She was supple and strong, for a girl, and not all that many months distant from boisterous games with the stable-boys over Kate’s farm-building roofs. She let herself down and ran like a cockroach for the back of the largest cage, while the mahout pulled down the rope.

  Kuzúm was there already, where he had been asleep since she had left the garden carrying her empty cloak wrapped round a bolster. Then Archie joined them, his hand on her hair. ‘Good lass. Are ye frightened?’

  ‘I think so.’ Philippa, incurably honest.

  ‘It’s natural. Well, ye’ve no call to fear. That beast won’t wake up for eight hours, if that, and your wee boy maybe longer. I’ve given him a terrible dose, but it was the only way to be sure.’

  ‘I know. Archie, we’d better get in.’

  ‘Aye.’ He opened the back of the cage. She had thought about it, but she hadn’t expected the leopard to be so large, or so heavy, or so warm. He lay on two solid feet of clean straw, with more banked at the back, and it was there that Archie made a small hollow and laid in the sleeping Kuzúm, a fine net bound lightly over his face. Pnilippa fished in her sleeve and pulled out another. Straw made you sneeze, Archie said. Try to minimize all the risks.

  It was more difficult to hide a fully dressed girl, however willing and thin. She was half under the leopard to end with, its sleeping weight on her legs as if a great wolfhound had chosen to slumber beside her. Except that if this one woke, it could tear her throat out with a single turn of its head. ‘You’ve got pluck,’ Archie said. He seemed reluctant to close the cage finally: standing, door in hand, he looked again at the leopard, and the little he could see of the girl, her brown hair mixed with the straw and already submerging. ‘You�
��ll need to trust me; but that you can do. I could put my mother in there, if she wasna stone deid already, and she’d come to no harm.’

  ‘I’ve taken the leet oath, Archie,’ said Philippa, her voice shaking slightly. Ye shall be buxom and obedient to all justices in all things that they shall lawfully command you. Archie, I’ll always be buxom to you.’

  ‘And cheeky,’ said Archie grinning. ‘Get your head down. There’s a cart and a driver due here in a minute.… I think I’ll fling a wee something over the cage. We don’t want poor Victoria upset by the light and the noises.’

  Half an hour later, with Archie walking solicitously at its side and one of the stable-boys cracking the whip over the mule-train, the cage with Victoria rumbled out of the Gate of the Dead, which had other and less picturesque uses, and, having passed the scrutiny of the heavy Janissary guard, rolled out and into the street, where it made its laborious way up and down the painful contours of the Abode of Felicity to Constantine’s Palace.

  The Head Keeper also, on Archie’s solicitous insistence, was cleansing his soul in Aya Sofia. The leopard, still sleeping, was detached and placed in a side yard, where there awaited already fully loaded a fine cartload of dung.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Philippa, warned by the smell. She put out her head and, seeing a sudden, breathtaking vision of marble pillars and archways, of gardens and houses and even, distantly, streets and chimneys and trees, gave a sudden hysterical gasp.