Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Aye: you’re out,’ said Archie. ‘Now ye have my apologies for the next bit, but it’ll be worth it, as ye might say, in the end. I’ve left a clean bit at the back end of the cart. If ye can slip out of the cage and up this side—I’ll give ye a lift—I’ll hand the bairn in beside you.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Philippa, tears pouring out of her eyes, as she lay at length, the sleeping child in her arms, under Archie’s clean bit of straw.

  ‘It’s elephant muck,’ said Archie. ‘You get a fair price for that. Anywhere in the world. You’d be surprised at the demand.’

  ‘Oh, Archie: I’m sure I should,’ said Philippa. ‘I’m not surprised you sell it, either. Archie, what a blessing Kuzúm’s asleep.…’

  She lay, her cheek in the straw and her arms round the small sturdy body of Kuzúm, and heard the hollow roll of the wheels as they passed through the Edirne Gate and out of Stamboul into the green fields of Thrace.

  Because of the forthcoming Festival the crowd round the blind story-teller was small that afternoon in the Hippodrome and he was able to speak to everyone in the way they liked best; inviting their comment on his stories and talking gravely or lightly, as the mood took his audience. A smaller boy than usual brought round the bowl: Ishiq, he explained, had been called to a sick brother. If the Meddáh himself missed a still smaller child, who used to stand outside the Beyazit Mosque, his hand on his knee, no one could have guessed.

  He stayed a long time, and his friends were bidding him rise to warm himself at their brazier and eat at their tables when Ishiq skipped lightly in and, taking the bowl, murmured in the blind Meddáh’s ear. The story-teller smiled, and turning to the murmur of voices said, ‘It is well. His brother is better: thou seest him shaking his shoulder-joints? Praise be to Allah, the Knower of Subtleties. May Allah the Bestower of Sustenance walk with thee.’ Then, Ishiq holding his arm, Lymond rose, and walked for the last time in the robes of the story-teller to the house of Míkál.

  He changed as he listened to Ishiq’s long story, peeling off the coarse robes of the Meddáh, the wig and bandage and beard already dropped on the floor. Míkál, sitting crosslegged and silent, said nothing, but watched the way he moved; the unhurried fingers; the intent, constrained profile as Ishiq told how the child Khaireddin, safe in his cage, had been brought out of the city and taken well to the west before being placed, as arranged, in the big barn of a farmer who was anxious for money and indifferent about his method of getting it. There one of the Geomalers was awaiting him: a familiar face whom he would trust. Then, joined by Philippa, Kuzúm and Archie, they would continue their journey.

  ‘And what of Philippa Khátún?’ Lymond said. He had dressed European-style in dark tunic and hose, with fine Turkish buskins laced on for quietness and speed. Over a chest lay the loose, hooded surcoat he would wear in the street, and the staff, to account for his stooping.

  ‘She is safe,’ Ishiq said. ‘And the child.’ Again, he recounted the story, and, listening, Lymond ran his hands over his disordered hair and, bending, began transferring possessions quickly and deftly from one robe to the other. One supposed, thought Míkál, that he had spent at least some hours of tension, telling his tales and awaiting this news. But it might have been of no moment at all.

  Míkál said softly, as the account came to an end, ‘So you have achieved all you promised. The girl Philippa and both children are free.’

  ‘They should be,’ said Lymond. His pallor had become greater in these last weeks and was now marked: in it, his eyes now appeared of a deeper and more brilliant blue, their lids architectural in a spare structure of bone.

  Old in the ways of the drug, Míkál had watched this man fighting it. Since he could order the measure for himself Lymond was no longer vulnerable to the violent changes in mood and in temper which had made him a tormenting companion ever since Malta. Under a high, steady intake of opium he was keyed up to a level of intense nervous activity: as capable of quick action and imaginative thinking as he had ever been: perhaps more so; and able, if he were called on, to sustain pain or intolerable effort without evident difficulty. It was the great virtue of the drug and, of course, the great danger. Míkál had seen a dromedary racing to Cairo on opium: it had travelled three days and three nights without halting or slackening pace; and on arrival had died where it stopped.

  In small things, the drug made one careless. It was Míkál who cared for him physically: who brought food and saw that it was eaten, and who restored the clothes of which Lymond, so uncharacteristically, took little care. He saw too that he had regular sleep while he could, although its quality was now restless and full of turbulent dreams from which he woke silent and running with sweat. There had been times when to Míkál, too, it had seemed that this day would never come: the day set for release, when Archie and Jerott between them would guide the children to safety, and Lymond would be free to pursue his own fate, and Gabriel’s. Míkál wondered what would become of the girl whom the man Blyth had compelled to go to the Seraglio without Lymond’s knowledge. Lymond had sworn at him, but mildly, when he had come to confess it. They hadn’t known then that the girl would be detained, nor had they made plans to free her. The Embassy, perhaps, would take care of that.…

  Lymond was ready. By now, in the unlit farmhouse barn in the dark fields to the west of the city, Philippa and the two children should have met, and Archie would be setting out with them on the long, fast journey home, where bribery had already marked the stages and ensured them protection and shelter and food so far as was humanly possible in the time he had had to spare. Then they would be within reach of his own friends and thence from station to station until they reached France and Sevigny.

  The planning was over: the meticulous arrangements with money running shorter and shorter; the talk and the listening; the making of a net out of cobwebs and a rope out of sand. His surcoat on, his hood still on his shoulders, Lymond turned to Míkál. ‘Ishiq has what I can give him, and so have the others. What do you lack, that I may give it to you?’

  Míkál’s handsome, fringed eyes filled with a half-angry, half-affectionate scorn. ‘Thou knowest too well,’ he said sweetly. ‘What I desire, thou dost not possess for thyself. How canst thou render it then to another?’

  For a moment Lymond did not speak. Then he said, ‘You have a tongue, have you not, which breaks backs? I have madness in many forms, but that which springs from the passions of the heart is not in my nature. That is all. We are all fashioned differently.’

  ‘We are all alike,’ said Míkál. ‘But this thou hast not yet discovered. Give me then a piece of thyself. I will take a lock of thy hair.… It is unwelcome?’

  ‘No,’ said Lymond quickly. ‘It is unwashed. But you may have it all, with pleasure, if you want it.’

  A moment later Míkál stood with the brief ring of hair in his hand, watching while Lymond slipped through the door and out into the night, on his way at last to Gabriel’s house.

  Built by a dead Vizier from the limestone of Makrikeui and the marble bones of fallen Byzantium, Gabriel’s palace was on high ground overlooking the Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmara beyond. The wind had dropped. Between the dark stems of the monuments sea and sky were a horizonless amethyst: small boats afloat on the water no more than a single pricking of light, set each on the quivering pillar of its reflection. And on the left St Sophia brooded, squat as a toad with its two slender minarets, smoke-grey against the veils of the sky.

  The light waned. Lymond, standing motionless in the shadow of the high palace wall, had no need to reconnoitre: as Meddáh he had watched all the routine of Gabriel’s household and marked all the gates and the windows, and the keepers who guarded them.

  Gabriel would be in Aya Sofia, for worship. The call for sunset prayer had already gone out; the myriad voices rising each tinted by distance as the minarets held each their different tones in the fast-fading light. Come now and worship the great God. La ilia Eillala, Mahomet Resullala. Olla bethbar: God is al
one.

  The sea and the sky were now indigo; the twisted snakes of the Hippodrome and the arcaded buildings a dense brownish black. Round the dome and minarets of St Sophia there sprang suddenly a circle of small golden lights, then another, one tier above. All over the city, masked by roofs and cypresses and the pale blue haze of woodsmoke in the dark, there hung pricked in the sky ring upon ring of lamps suspended like fireflies to honour the Prophet. Somewhere a cracker went off, and then another, in a burst of cerise fire above the Beyazit hilltop. Lymond turned and, making his way softly back along the dark wall, reached the place he had chosen and scaled it.

  He killed the guard, quietly, as he made his rounds past the spot. It was not a time to take risks, or to be squeamish. Now he laid near him the drugged meat for the hounds which the other doorkeeper would shortly bring out and release. In half an hour the man lying at his feet would be due to report. Perhaps ten minutes after that, the alarm might be raised; and shortly after that Gabriel himself was due to return. He had forty minutes in which to do what he had to do. It was enough.

  It had not been hard either to discover beforehand which was Gabriel’s room. A travelling juggler, calling for alms in the kitchen, might well inquire the whereabouts of the master of the house. The servants too were proud of their new master, who was gentle and generous, and of the luxury fit for an emperor with which he had begun to surround himself.

  There was an almond tree: the twisted grandchild of what had once been a hillside of blossom, near the wooden balcony, totally enclosed, which overhung the small herb- and water-garden at the side of the house. Lymond climbed it noiselessly, his eyes on the windows around him, and reaching the furthermost point, jumped for the balcony. For a moment he hung, securing his purchase; then with a swing of his body he was up and clinging against the brown intricate fretwork while he probed at the lock with a wire.

  There was a click, and he was inside, and parting the cloth-of-gold curtains which led into Gabriel’s chamber. Then he pulled them together behind him.

  Complete darkness, and the scent of jasmine, mixed with the fading odours of incense. A woman’s scent. Not surprising perhaps. Even when sworn to obedience and chastity, Gabriel had denied none of his appetites. Picking his way in the dark, Lymond made sure that the room had only one other door, and that it was locked. Then slipping out steel, flint and tinder, he struck a small spark and, with his spill, found and lit a fine taper.

  The floor was carpeted, the pile deep as fur, and the walls were hung with silk chosen by a master expert in silks: cloth of gold with a raised pattern of velvet: a crimson velvet from Bursa, woven with leaves and cornflowers and roses in silver thread and white silk; a banded velvet and satin with the word Arrahman, ‘The Merciful’, within cartouches in olive and silver.

  There was no Turkish mattress, but a couch in ivory inlaid with dark woods and outlined in gold: it was unmade, its coverlet half on the floor, and glimmering under it was a single earring: a pretty trinket made in the form of a tassel of seed pearls, its knot studded with rubies. Lymond looked at it for a moment, and then, scooping it up, slipped the earring into the purse at his belt.

  The rest of the room was no less exquisite: the candelabra of silver, the Persian enamels, the storage chests of lacquer from Cathay, or of leather, bound with worked metal. In the corner stood a statue of Venus in white marble, signed by Praxiteles, a jade Mohammedan tespi slung round its neck. ‘Cum fueris Romae, Romano vivitomore …’

  There was no one to hear. Lymond knelt, and using his wire, forced open and lifted the lid of the first chest ‘… Cum fueris alibi, vivito more loci. Loot, Gabriel? And gold. And some jewellery worthy of the grandest of Viziers—why not in your Treasury, I wonder? But no papers. Try again …’

  There were very few letters. Lymond was both quick and thorough. Not only the furnishings of the room but the small shuttered cupboards were examined: the jewelled boxes meant for Gabriel’s Qur’ân: the silk girdle-purses kept with his clothes. His robes and his furs were magnificent: after the briefest of hesitations, the flexible hands slipped among them and searched inside them, probing. Nothing again: nothing of consequence.

  A pity. A pity that Gabriel also was thorough, and a veteran of guile.… There remained therefore only one task to be done. Perhaps Gabriel would return from the mosque before the dead guard and the drugged hounds had been discovered; but one could not be sure. Better to wait, therefore, knife in hand, where one might least be expected.…

  Half an hour had gone by. Silence outside, and so far no noise of disturbance inside the house. Lymond snuffed out the taper, and sliding between the heavy gold curtains, stepped on to the balcony. The roof was strengthened inside, as he had remembered, with short wooden beams. It was the work of a moment to swing himself up and balance there, close to the ceiling, the shuttered balcony just below him, listening for the moment when Gabriel entered his room.

  Five minutes passed, and ten. Inactivity was trying. His head on his arm, he found his mind slipping too easily from its shackles; drifting off into a limbo of fantasy until shocked awake by the shift of his weight on the beam. His mouth was dry with the pungent aridity of just-swallowed opium.… Gabriel would know of that: would be already aware of its effects and ready to play on them, given the chance. The worst which could happen to Gabriel was death. The worst which could happen to himself was to be deprived, he supposed of the opium he carried. A public degradation of body and spirit under Gabriel’s eye would be less than inviting. But there was a simple way out of that.

  Shortly after that he became aware that someone was unlocking the door from the house into Gabriel’s room. It was done smoothly and quietly, but the door fell open after that with a whine, and he heard several feet quickly enter the room, and the muted chink of steel against steel. A voice said in Turkish, ‘Empty. Search it.’

  Not Gabriel’s voice. And no one but Gabriel, surely, would issue orders in that room, had he been here. Lymond lay very still in the shadows, his knife lightly gripped in his fingers, and listened to the search coming nearer until suddenly a strong hand ripped thecloth-of-gold curtains apart, and a blaze of new candlelight flooded the balcony.

  It was more than he had expected, but he was still in the shadows, and he did not move as they all came through in turn and examined the small shuttered room. There were four of them, and they were Janissaries. The tall white caps were only inches below him as they crossed to the shutters and tried them, expecting them to be locked.

  They gave at once. Lymond saw the Odabassy open them fully and first peer outside, then examine the lock with a taper. The scratches on it were probably plain.… But if an intruder had clearly entered the house by this method, he might also by this time have left.

  The four men came back, talking. It was pure ill luck that with the increased draught the taper flared suddenly high, so that the Janissary bearing it looked up, concerned lest the wood should have caught. He saw Lymond in the moment that Lymond launched himself at the unshuttered window and, sliding over the frame, swung himself hand over hand down and round the side, towards the leaning branch of the almond.

  The men were shouting above him. He felt a knife shave the side of his arm as he jumped for the tree; and then there were answering shouts from below. As he landed he saw other white caps running towards him from the front yard of the house. He kicked the first one in the teeth as he jumped half the height of the tree, and drove his knife into the second, wrenching it out as he ran. The Janissaries above were climbing out of the balcony as he had done and were following him, scrambling and leaping: in a moment he would have no chance at all. Lymond turned on the run and set off swiftly and quietly for the wall by which he had entered. He reached it just before the pounding feet at his back, and hoisted himself without pausing up and over, his hands hardly touching, He landed on the balls of his feet; and snatching his folded robe, fled.

  They came after him, shouting. Someone stepped in his way and he knocked him over: there
was a shriek and a clatter and an appalling stench of cheap scent, followed as the Janissaries came up with a good deal more stumbling and some half-muffled grunts. It had been a pedlar’s pack, he concluded; possibly even with pins in it. The contents of the pack stayed behind, but the contents of the spilled flask continued redolent as Lymond, running quickly and easily, led them up street after street to the biggest congested area he could think of: the covered bazaar.

  It was open because of the festival: lane upon small twisting lane of low buildings of clay or of wood: three-sided boxes within which the merchants and craftsmen of Stamboul made and vended their goods, for Allah had declared trade (by men) to be lawful, though usury was prohibited. Now torches smoked in their sockets outside all the booth doorways, and the smell of tallow fat rose to the awnings which closed out the sky, mixed with the sharper reek of geranium from Gabriel’s Janissaries. With only a matter of yards between them and their quarry they plunged into the first smoky alley to find their feet treading on sawdust and their way barred by a puzzled man in a round cap and apron, a low wooden bench strapped broadside-on to his head. He turned this way and that, bewildered, as the Janissaries danced threatening before him, and finally revolved where he stood, admitting three or four, it was true, but felling three or four others as well. Behind him, someone had upset in passing a stack of small stools which rolled and oscillated on the uneven ground as the pursuers, stumbling and jumping, flung themselves after their vanishing victim.

  In the next lane they were quilting: inoffensive craftsmen seated crosslegged with their curved needles and rolls of bright silk, the coarse sacks of cotton wool open beside them. Lymond darted through, smooth as an auk under water, and the air was dappled and dancing with cotton: the Janissaries ran full tilt into a blizzard of it, settling into their eyes and their noses, convulsing them with sneezes as they reeled on through empty sacks and furious quilters. ‘Opus ptumarium,’ someone said. They followed the voice.