Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  She woke much later because of a movement of the bed and this time lay still, remembering at once where she was. Then the man on the other side of the bed moved again, blindly abrupt in his sleep, and she realized that in the restless slumber of opium he was not an easy bedfellow; hard on her, and harder still on himself. For a while, still half asleep, she drowsed and woke and drowsed again through the disturbance, sometimes aware of his voice. Once he said, clearly enough to be distinguished, ‘Tell me. I can’t understand. Why did you do it?’ And added, after a moment, in a queer voice, ‘Poor Eloise.’ Another time he said only, O mill. What hast thou ground …?’ Philippa knew that reference. Her impulse was to move to him as she would to Kuzúm, and put her hand on his arm, but she was afraid of both his pride and his temper.

  But in the end it was he himself who, flinging over in some great gesture of escape and despair, touched her body. He recoiled like a spring; like someone who had received his bane-blow, torn half awake by the shock, his expressive body hard with revulsion. Shocked herself by his reaction, Philippa sat up, and in that second he became thoroughly awake; aware of the flurry of movement, and of her alarm. He said, ‘What have I done?’ And as, confused and distressed, she did not at once speak, he said wearily, ‘Oh, my God;’ and leaving the bed, crossed the carpet to the furthest corner of the room, and, dropping by the stool there, covered his blind face with his hands.

  Sitting rigid, Philippa heard him draw in his breath; and then again; and knew by the sound what he was trying to subdue. She lay back, tears running down her face, and covered her ears with her hands.

  When she removed them a long time after he was perfectly silent, his head on his arms, but it was not over, for he spoke, as he had once before, hearing her movement. ‘Philippa …?’

  Philippa said fiercely, ‘Look: nothing happened. You only thought it did. You moved in your sleep, that was all.’

  He didn’t lift his head, and his voice, muffled by his hands, was not familiar at all. ‘I know. I thought it was somebody else.… Philippa … release me from my promise.’

  She put her hands over her mouth, and then took them away. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’

  He had pulled his own hands down, looking still at the stool, his face quite turned away. ‘You can. Philippa. Please let me go.’

  Her refusal this time was a whisper; but he must have heard it, for he didn’t ask her again. The rest of the night Philippa passed lying awake, without moving; without speaking; and keeping to herself all the untoward weight of her grief and her pity. In her diary no entry ever appeared for that night, in which the light-hearted hoyden of Hexham vanished altogether.

  Towards morning she thought perhaps Lymond slept, but he didn’t stir, and she could not harass him with the quilt, although the intense cold had gone. Then, weary as she was, she must herself have fallen asleep, for when she next opened her eyes, the corner on the far side of the room was illumined with daylight, and empty.

  He had gone to the room Jerott shared with Archie and Gaultier. Shaken unwillingly awake, Jerott heard the cool voice, not quite in its familiar tone. ‘Drunk and in a state of legal uncleanliness. Wake up. We have a lot to discuss.’ Jerott opened his eyes.

  Lymond was standing back, waiting for him in his stained hose, his torn shirt pulled off and thrown over one shoulder. His back was to the light. But even so, Jerott was suddenly quiet, and he heard Archie beside him say sharply, ‘Have you had any sleep at all?’

  ‘I have had delightful dreams,’ said the soft, roughened voice. ‘Fawns in the shape of fairies with musk-fragrant hair. And I have breakfasted on opium. Will you listen, or are you anxious to do all the talking?’

  Jerott held down his permanent nausea. ‘Philippa?’

  Lymond said, ‘Those who gather frankincense are dedicated unto divine honours, and use no carnal company with any woman. Philippa is well, and deep in blameless slumber. We now have to decide how best to get her and you safely home.’ And this time they listened.

  At the end, Jerott said after a long pause, ‘Must you marry her?’

  Lymond shrugged. ‘What else? Maidens despoiled, men-children defiled; children brought up in impious abominations. Kuzúm will get over it, but her integrity has gone.’

  Jerott said, as Philippa had done, ‘And you?’ And Lymond stared at him, his brows delicately lifted. ‘I shall gather frankincense,’ he replied.

  Escorted by Chiausi, they left the Topkapi Serail of the Sultan Suleiman by the sea gate, spared the long procession back through the great courtyards; spared too the curiosity of those who might concern themselves too closely with Roxelana’s affairs. The Sultan’s barge awaited them by the crystal kiosk, rowed by the long line of the mutes. They took their places, four men, two girls and a child, silent in new flowered silks; who had been made to taste in Paradise the chastisement of Hell. The day, thought Philippa, white-faced with the child Kuzúm on her knee, on which men shall be as scattered moths, and the mountains shall be as loosened wool. The day which makes grey the heads of young children …

  The words now had meaning. All poetry had meaning, and sorrow she had never envisaged. Behind, veiled in soft rain as the dragon-prowed barge slid across the grey water to Pera, she saw for the last time close at hand the soft, frescoed height of the Seraglio, heart of the Ottoman world, its domes and chimneys and towers, its tall cypresses and gardens picked out in grisaille and gold.

  Today, perhaps, the Gate of the Dead would perform its true office for a small boy whose heritage no one knew; who had lived in squalor and perished in fright. A sacrifice to diminish the soul. A sacrifice to colour all the rest of one’s days.

  In silence they crossed the water and, hardly speaking, they landed. Philippa carried Kuzúm. Lymond had come for her before leaving, his eyes steady, and she had returned his greeting, her face and voice equally peaceful. A well-governed exercise. Except that you could see still, about his eyes and his brow, the marks of the murderous thing which had touched him when Khaireddin had died.

  They disembarked, and found horses waiting to take them up to the Embassy.

  Chesnau was waiting, ignorant of everything save for the news that they were all returning that morning. One deduced, from his face, his relief that no diplomatic intervention was necessary: no international incident had taken place. Lymond said nothing about Gabriel. He merely asked for their boxes to be packed and arrangements made for them to leave as soon as the Dauphiné could be provisioned.

  Their most unexpected welcome, dislocated with emotion, came from Onophrion Zitwitz. Onophrion the unregarded, who had been sent back to the Embassy on Jerott’s detention and had remained there ever since, consumed with anxiety. Activity of all things was the emollient he desired: he flung himself into the preparations for departure; the monumental architect of other men’s projects; and Lymond asked for the chaplain.

  In the plain and pungent philosophy of Philippa’s life, bridal visions had never intruded. Flaw Valleys with Kate and Gideon, their laughter and music had been all she had ever desired. She remembered the wedding in Greece, all sunshine and dancing; the crowned girl and boy with tinsel in their dark hair; and how she had pitied them. But now, preparing for another wedding with a table for altar in a damp Turkish study, and the smell of ink and expediency instead of incense and roses, Philippa thought again of the bride, blushing, receiving her shoe-buckles; and the Pilgrims of Love, giving their hearts and their laughter and the moonlit song of the lyre. And Míkál’s beautiful voice: The fountains make thee thy bride’s veil; the lyre spins thee thy ribbons; the mallow under thy foot is the hand of thy bridegroom.… Sometimes, one must travel to find what is love.

  She let her mind go just so far; and then, with gentle hands, closed the door she had opened. Then, wearing not her Turkish robe but a plain woollen dress of her own, her hair unbound; with no paint and no jewels but a small silver brooch long ago bought by her father, Philippa walked with Onophrion to the place of her wedding.

  Ly
mond was not there. He came a little late, quickly, changed too into his own doublet and hose, neither too elaborate nor too discourteously simple. They both, thought Philippa flatly, knew all the nuances that etiquette demanded. He gave a comforting smile, and then took his place by her side.

  The priest was old. Philippa could hear the witnesses, Jean Chesnau and his chief secretary, shifting a little behind her, impatient with the slow voice. Outside, Onophrion was keeping the door. Of Jerott and the others there was no sign.…

  Marthe had no interest in marriage. Marthe was in brief and competent charge of Kuzúm, who was worried by Fippy in a strange dress which fitted her middle, and no kohl on her eyes. Philippa thought suddenly, with a frisson which ran like wind through her nerves, Now she is my sister.… Then she felt Lymond glance at her swiftly, and forced herself to forget it.

  The words of the Mass went over her head. She made her mechanical responses, and heard his voice, sealing his pledges. Other people married young, to men they didn’t know, and had no dispensation such as she had. To sleep alone; to plan her own destiny. A virgin married, with a son not her own.… Kate always said, thought Philippa, blinking, that the Somervilles were mad to a man. Then Lymond’s hand on her arm guided her to her feet and then dropped. ‘It’s all over,’ he said.

  Etiquette was silent on the answer to that. He did not offer to kiss her. Philippa said, to the scandalization of priest and secretary and chargé d’affaires, ‘I think I’d like to get drunk.’

  They all called her madame. There was no wedding-feast, but a dinner now preparing, to be laid out for them all in an hour or so’s time. Onophrion, his mind on his ovens, spread before them his deferential good wishes and fled. Lymond said, ‘Come out for ten minutes.’ Then as she studied him with sober brown eyes he had said, smiling a little, his eyes tired, ‘It isn’t a command. You must do as you please. But I thought a little air might help us both.’

  Philippa said, overwhelmed with repentance. ‘I’m sorry. Kate always said I’m a lout. Are you feeling all right? Can’t you go and get drunk?’

  He picked up her cloak and held it for her, his teeth white as he smiled. ‘You have still some things to find out about me. I don’t drink. In any case, think of the example to Kuzúm.’

  She took a little time working that out, as they walked down the hill through the morning traffic of Pera, their Janissary following behind. Certainly, there had been no raki last night on his breath, last night of all nights when one would have expected it. She thought of him, unwillingly, as he had looked in the shadows, his arms crossed, his head buried between them, and compared it with another memory, sharp in her mind. They were threading their way down to the Golden Horn, past the burial-ground and tekke of dervishes, when Philippa suddenly said, ‘Was it Jerott … Jerott who drank too much on the Dauphiné?’

  He did not quite know what she meant, but he said mildly, ‘Jerott, I suppose, has certainly been known to drink too much, on board ship or off it. So until last year have I. He’ll stop, no doubt, when he has resolved his trouble with Marthe.’

  ‘Why did you stop?’ she asked. Someone had engaged their Janissary in heated argument. Lymond didn’t look back.

  He shrugged. ‘One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.’

  She did not put her next question. He raised an eyebrow and said, ‘What restraint! Will you do something for me?’

  ‘What?’ said Philippa warily.

  ‘As we pass, slip into the tekke. Someone will speak to you. If they say, Aşk olsun,’ answer them, ‘Aşkin cemal olsun’… can you remember that?’

  ‘I heard it all the way to Thessalonika,’ said Philippa. She had gone very pale. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Follow wherever he takes you. He is a friend.’

  For a moment longer she stood, looking at him. Then she said, ‘You gave me a promise. I have done what you asked.’

  ‘And I shall keep my word,’ Lymond said. ‘So far as fortune will let me.… Now!’

  The dark door of the tekke opened up on her left. In a moment, Philippa was inside. ‘Aşk olsun,’ said the soft voice of Míkál.

  28

  Constantinople and Thrace

  Ten minutes later, decidedly changed in appearance, Philippa walked again into the street.

  She had no idea where she was going; only that, robed in veils once more, Moslem fashion, she was to follow the slender robed shape of Míkál just ahead, keeping her head modestly low, trying only not to lose sight of him as he threaded his way down to the boats and across the Golden Horn, back to the city they had just left with such pain. There a donkey was waiting for him, its panniers full of red earthenware, and he mounted it and sat, his dirty feet stuck out on either side, while she trudged at its side.

  She had never before walked in the city: never seen this from the straw of her cage when she bumped through with Archie, or when the Janissaries brought her back, veiled and chained, on their horses. She climbed the hill to Suleiman’s great new mosque, the monument to his glory, still unfinished, the marble columns from buried Byzantium being levered still into place, the tomb waiting for its magnificent master. Mustafa now would never come to worship there in the robes of his father. Of Roxelana’s sons, the fragile adoring disciple of Mustafa was already failing: the other two eyeing and circling, prepared to light out the succession perhaps over all their father had erected.

  Perhaps she had seen Ottoman power at its height at this moment, in this city lying under its uneasy winter, awaiting the flowering season when the sharp lilac-pink of the Judas tree would cloud the gold of the cupolas, and the tulips bar the short grass in the Seraglio gardens, where the gazelles came to graze and later the soft wind would be filled with the smell of carnations.

  Past Suleiman’s Mosque and the high walls of the Old Seraglio, with the house of Názik the nightingale-dealer at its foot, now shuttered and closed, the birds silent and gone. The covered market, the channelled chords of its commerce vibrating with sound: a bright-winged aviary like Názik’s of deep-throated men. The pigeons, before Beyazit’s Mosque, where another story-teller sat, telling the tale of the Forty Viziers, but not as the Meddáh used to tell it who had now joined the First Story-teller Suhâib Rûmi in Paradise, where the ground is pure wheaten flour mixed with musk and saffron, its stones being hyacinths and pearls, and of gold and silver its palaces. Or so the boy Ishiq said.

  Ignorant of these things, Philippa followed Míkál until the donkey stopped before a stone house set in waste ground where a dog nosed in a courtyard full of sour rubble and weeds, and the door was fast locked.

  Míkál tapped while she stood by the donkey; and presently, the warped door creaked open, and the frightened face of a negress, peering through, retreated to allow Míkál and Philippa to climb the steps and slip in. Then they walked down a passage and into a room full of people.

  ‘Enter, children of sloth,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘My God, I thought you were never coming. Míkál …?’

  ‘They are watching the house. You say there is only one boat? For nine people?’

  Nine people. Philippa, pulling the veil wide-eyed from her face, saw with a leapfrogging heart that they were all there, Jerott and Marthe, Archie and Gaultier. A large old man with white hair whose extreme placidity struck an odd note in the feverish air of the room. And … Tippy!’ someone screamed, and flung himself into her arms.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Philippa, hugging him, weeping. ‘You can’t get rid of some people; no matter how much you try.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Lymond, ‘we’ve one boat and a raft. While we were in the Seraglio, Master Gilles has been busy.’

  ‘A raft?’ said Gaultier. He turned round, his fingers closing on air, his face ashen. ‘A raft? My God, the thieving old bastard.… He’s taken the treasure!’

  The old man’s bushy eyebrows reared in his big face. ‘Quiet yourself, Pharisee. Turpe est Doctori, cum culpa redurgit ipsum. One set of
thieves is enough. I have merely completed my inventory.’

  Míkál was peering through a crack in the shutters. ‘More are coming. There is little cover, were one to shoot. There are no muskets?’

  ‘There are no muskets,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t be blood-thirsty.… We have two vehicles. Suppose we employ them.’

  It was not easy, climbing one by one down that vertical ladder into the small rocking boat at its foot. Jerott took the small raft, with Philippa and Kuzúm, while the other six crowded into the boat. Lymond, closing the cupboard and bestowing the trapdoor neatly up above, was the last. Then they were afloat in the great underground cavern, in the world of green water and dim drowning pillars, the roar of the fall in their ears.

  To Archie and Lymond himself it was no great surprise, after Jerott’s description. Míkál clearly also knew what to expect. But to Philippa, holding Kuzúm still at her side, it was like the last mysterious station, dark, enchanted and cruel, of some terrible Odyssey. Ahead, the light of the boat slid between the black pillars and sank green into the waters, filled with flickering fish. Jerott, lightless, poled his silent way after until, distant from the thundering inflow, he was able to answer her questions. Her last was a natural one. ‘When did you all come?’

  Jerott said, ‘We’ve been coming all day nearly, in different ways. Francis had it arranged early this morning, first with Míkál and then with the rest of us. Then he got the Embassy preoccupied, you see with … various …’

  ‘I see,’ said Philippa. ‘It would have been awkward, I suppose, if I’d had a nerve-storm and stopped the wedding just as you were all climbing out of the window, or whatever you did. But I really would like to have been told.’

  Jerott cleared his throat. ‘He didn’t like doing it.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ said Philippa. They didn’t speak the rest of the way.

  She was persuading Kuzúm into the darkness of the tunnel when they all heard, far across the dark cistern, the sounds of a fierce hammering, muffled by distance.