Pawn in Frankincense (66 page)

‘Then I have nothing to lose,’ said Lymond gently, ‘by killing you now.’ Chatting quietly, their eyes on their plates, they presented a picture, thought d’Aramon, of civilized amity: two well-bred courtiers of uncommon looks and audacity; one in Western clothes and the other in the dress of the East. Yet at least, renegade and Christian,
they must fear and dislike one another; and at the worst, as he now had good reason to believe, they might well be implacable enemies.…

‘Why make empty threats?’ said Gabriel, smiling. ‘You would have tried it already, but for the consequences to others. We have the boy, as you see. Whether he is mine or yours I do not know, nor does it interest me. I have no stomach for snivelling infants, but in a few years from now, I will find him of use.’

‘And the other child?’ said Lymond. ‘One for each pillow? Both the camel and the camel-driver and the coffin being Ali?’

‘The other child is in Constantinople.… Pastry is fattening, but I imagine that does not concern you? Or the roseleaf jam with white cracknels? The sweetmeats are admirable, but I cannot say I am looking forward to a lifetime of sheep’s feet and yoghourt. You know the truth of the tag. The toasting of cheese in Wales and the seething of rice grains in Turkey will enable a man freely to profess to cook like a master.… I shall permit you to find the other child. You may even think he resembles you more than this one. I am no judge. Then you will die. You have had a long journey, my dear Francis; and you have put me to a certain amount of additional trouble. I have prepared for you a detailed, an exquisite death. You will not enjoy it. But in the end, what will you suffer?
Hie jacet arte Plato, Cato, Tullius ore … Vermes corpus alit, spiritus astra petit
. In the meanwhile, let it be perfectly clear. If the slightest accident should befall me, the extreme penalty will be paid in return by both children and the Somerville girl.’

Porcelain bowls on porcelain saucers had replaced the preserved lemon flowers, the pastes and cream and pistachios. In them were sherbets of raisin juice and rhubarb and rose-leaves; lotus, tamarind and grapes, honey, violets and melons. Sipping: ‘You have the Somerville girl?’ said Lymond. ‘But how can you prove it?’

‘You received all the proof you require at Thessalonika, my très cher Ambassador. I made sure of that. She is in the harem, but do not concern yourself. She will not share the fate of Oonagh O’Dwyer. I found her crude, so she is being trained. She is young, in mind and body. There is room for response. She will be part of the reward I request in return for my first service as Grand Vizier. On her I shall build my harem.…
Allah, Allah, except Allah. This has gone; may a richer one come. May the Divine Reality give blessings. Let there be light for those who have eaten
.… We must go, I fear, so that you may present your credentials and your petition. You will not be surprised, now, should the latter unhappily fail.…’ And he rose, the stiff white satin falling around him, and stood wiping his fingers.

The Turkish robes were being brought. Stripped also down to his doublet, M. d’Aramon allowed himself to be placed inside a collarless black damask robe, on which leaves and blossoms and nosegays of flowers rioted in red and gold silks, and the wide sleeves and twenty
small buttons were knotted with rubies. Lymond stood up. ‘You spoke of threats. You have indulged in a great many.… I prefer to make promises. I am going to take the girl and both children safely from you, whatever the outcome of my petition today. When I have done that, I shall allow nothing to stop me until you are dead. For that is the difference between us,’ said Francis Crawford with simplicity. ‘There is no price I will not pay after that for your death.’

For a moment Gabriel studied him, amused contempt in the bland face. ‘Where is the open mind, the width of vision, the sense of history, the awareness of changing society which we used to have forced on our attention? You have chosen to walk among the minor paths, and blunt your wits on simple minds.… For ten years, the Sublime Porte have sued me; have sent me gifts and every sort of beguilement. Dragut is ageing; the Sultan himself is unfit now for the field. I can give them all the skills and experience they require; the special knowledge of Christian harbours and Christian ways which they seek.

‘Now they have me, do you think they will risk alienating my loyalty? If I order the girl to be ganched or throttled or torn apart between horses, it will be done. If I wish it, I can have the brats drowned and trampled; their tongues uprooted, their eyes seared with hot copper. Think of Rustem Pasha: his power; his wealth. In his absence, his power is mine. In the Sultan’s absence, my rule can become absolute.… Do you suppose that any living person in the Sublime Porte will dare do what I have forbidden? Try the strength of your credit if you wish. You will find it is limited.’

‘I had an extraordinary feeling,’ said Lymond, ‘like a bat sitting in a cannonball tree, that I was going to be thrown on my own initiative. All this stirs one to ask why you troubled with Scotland?’

Gabriel smiled. ‘It was ripe, then, for practice. This is ripe, now, for picking.… The Sultan, I believe, now awaits you.’

Outside, under the splendid arcade, d’Aramon and the chief officials of the Embassy were already waiting, their Turkish robes dimly glittering with the reflected greens and golds from the ceiling, the sun and the trees; drawn up in form to walk round the remaining edge of the square to the Gate of Felicity. Behind them, two ushers waited to place Lymond’s robe, in turn, over his shoulders. By whatever delicate coincidence, it was of miniver, lined with a white brocaded silk flowered with castles and lions in faint gold embroidery. Turning, he waited for them to approach, and, slipping his arms through the short sleeves, allowed them to fasten it briefly. Then he turned back to Gabriel and bowed.

‘It is a matter of deep regret that I cannot kill you at this moment,’ said Lymond gently. ‘Because there are three children at the adventure of God I cannot address you either, as I should prefer. But I promise you failure. Whatever happens, I shall take the children and free them.’

Gabriel smiled. ‘Believe it if you must. You cannot alter what is in store, or avoid the long appointment with pain which awaits you. My other friends will take heed from your … infelicity.… I bid you goodbye.’

For a moment longer, encased like chrysalids in the plate-armour of ceremony, the two men faced each other in silence, and M. d’Aramon, watching apprehensively from the door, felt the tension already within the Divan tighten to a point beyond sound.

He did not know that for one man at least the room had become filled with the scents of a night garden in Algiers; choked and overlaid with the stench of a hideous burning. He did not know that, in spite of what Lymond had said, Gabriel was at that moment all but a dead man, and the lives of Philippa Somerville and two unknown children all but destroyed. But he saw Francis Crawford’s hands spreadeagled suddenly, hard at his sides; and something inspired M. d’Aramon to say quickly, ‘M. l’Ambassadeur! We must leave.’

Then Lymond turned abruptly from Jubrael Pasha and, without speaking, walked through the door of the Divan and joined the procession outside.

It was the last fine day of that autumn. Glaring high from a lucid blue sky, the sun struck down from the studded rows of lead domes and lanced into the eye from the gold leaf and copper enriching the courtyard, and the silver-tipped staffs and the clothes of the Janissaries, the Kapici and Chiausi in their unmoving ranks. The silence was complete.

Gold danced in the shadows of Bab-i-Sa’adet, the Gate of Felicity, as the French Ambassador’s train approached it through one of the flanking colonnades of verd-antique pillars. Below the high, dazzling soffit of its canopy a deep carpet had been laid before the innermost gate: the gate through which entry was forbidden to all but Suleiman Khan the Magnificent and the chosen members of the Inner Household and those whom, as today, he might receive in private audience in the Arzodasi, the Throne Room just inside its gates. Beyond that was the unknown: the state apartments, the harem, the quarters of the eunuchs and the little, painted pages locked behind the three gates of the outer courts, and the ranks of Spahi and Janissary and all the public officialdom of the empire.

White eunuchs guarded the door: tall men of many races robed in gamboge and sable, stark and pure in their turbans as a cliff-face of gannets. Between them stood the Kapi Agha, the Chief White Eunuch and High Chamberlain, the head of the Third Court of the Seraglio. He bowed, hand on breast: once to the new Ambassador and once to the old; and then, turning, faced the high portico, wrought in panels of marble and wreathed with the golden calligraphy of the Qur’ân, which contained the Gate of Felicity: the great double-leafed doors of Bab-i-Sa’adet. He raised his hand, walking forward, his train
of vermilion velvet brushing the carpet. And as Francis Crawford moved forward behind him, the doors opened slowly.

They opened on flowers and birdsong: on a dazzle of white and gilt marble set in willows and cypress and boxtrees; on galleried walls of marthe and turquoise blue porcelain whose gilded Greek pillars were veiled in the spray of the fountains spaced down the long, sloping courtyard. Underfoot, the carpet continued over pale and formal mosaics, under the inner canopy of the Gate of Felicity and to the door of the Sultan’s kiosk, which faced it directly, and which was bedded, as a jewel in velvet, in the caissoned files of his household.

They stood silent; slot upon slot of deep colour and quick shifting fragrance: the White Eunuchs in bright taffeta coats and loose trousers and slippers; the hundred dwarves, sullen and scimitared; grotesque in gold satin and squirrel fur. The Imams, in crimson. The two hundred Imperial Pages, in tunics of cloth of gold to the knee, their sashes of bright coloured silk; their boots of red Spanish leather, and the long locks of hair curling, under the cloth-of-gold caps, from the shaven heads of the Sultan’s own household. And the deaf mutes, their stiff elaborate hats in violet velvet, their robes of cloth of gold flashing as their hands moved: the only human beings in all that magnificent courtyard allowed, through affliction, to talk.

The kiosk of Suleiman the Magnificent was three-sided, its marble sides inlaid with jet and porphyry and jasper and arched with legends in silver; its coloured windows laced with wrought gold. Inside, over all was the deep Indian yellow of leaf gold in shadow. Hangings of silver tissue, dimly sparkling on silver gilt columns; an icy crust of carved stucco; an enamelled glint of white and emerald tiling; a ceiling deeply inlaid and gilded, supporting a crystal-paned lantern of silver, its rim set with turquoise and opal.

From the open, third side, a carpet of embroidered carnation satin led to a low dais, whose own carpet was worked in silver, turquoises and orient pearls. On it sat enthroned the master of all this magnificence: Suleiman, by the grace of God King of Kings, Sovereign of Sovereigns, most high Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond; most mighty King of Persia, Arabia, Syria and Egypt; Prince of Mecca and Aleppo; possessor of Jerusalem: Sultan Suleiman Khan, the Shadow of God upon Earth.

He wore cloth of gold, figured with deep, crimson velvet and edged, fluting on fluting, with a white fur pinned and studded with rubies. Rubies burned from the scimitar hung at his side, and in the cluster of pigeon’s-egg jewels set in gold which held the peacock plumes in his white turban and clasped the enchained jewels which lay swagged in its folds.

The face was aquiline, bearded and dark. Not the face of a happy man; but a face of authority, thinned by indifferent health. More than thirty years Emperor, Suleiman, now nearing sixty, belonged to the
age of England’s Henry VIII and the first King Francis of France: the age of magnificent despotism and supreme theological rule. He sat, a shadowy figure within his glorious casket, as still as the cipher; the symbol, which for this occasion was all he was expected to be.

Behind the cloth of gold and the diamonds and the blank face of ceremony was a living, powerful emperor. Following the Kapi Agha and his successor to take his place, with his fellows, under the arcade opposite the wide throne-room door, M. d’Aramon wondered what hope Francis Crawford could sustain now of disrupting that sovereign calm.

Standing still at the head of the gentlemen of his suite, Lymond’s face was unreadable above the stiff magnificence of his gown, black fur upon white, each lattice pinned with an ermine tail. Breathless under the weight of his own brocade, d’Aramon could guess at the malice behind the costly gesture, and admire the self-command which could ignore it. Then there was a movement behind them, through the arch of the Gateway of Felicity, and two by two, as they waited, the Ambassador’s pages filed into the court, and pacing slowly to the Sultan’s kiosk, displayed to their recipient the gifts of the Most Christian Monarch of France.

To d’Aramon it was familiar. In so many countries had he stood and watched the wealth of his master lavished, like this, upon some petty king, some heretic figurehead: the bales of lawn and velvet and brocade; the vessels; the swords in their jewelled velvet sheaths; the furs and chains and belts and horse harness of silver; the hawks and greyhounds and thoroughbred stallions. Converted into luxury the produce of their fields and vineyards, the labourers’ sweat; the landowner’s taxes. The Baron de Luetz watched the file of pages bear their glittering burdens to the kiosk, and pause, displaying them, and wheel pair by pair to deposit each in its warehouse. On either side of the kiosk, the Kislar Aga and the Kapi Agha, standing motionless, made no gesture, and within, straight-backed on his throne, the Sultan made no sign until, their breathing coming hard in the silence, there came forward the four liveried servants bearing the litter with the last present of all.

Within this bower of sunshine and extravagance, the horological spinet sparkled like a piece of bossed and wadded embroidery; a confection of gold leaf and sumptuous quartzes enthroning in white sapphire the bald face of time. Bending, the four sweating pages brought its litter to rest at the door of the kiosk and bowing, Georges Gaultier, choked in charcoal velvet, slid the spinet from its ivory drawer and touched the little spring above to set the automata alive. A shower of silvery chimes fell on the silence, and the casket of the spinet erupted into a blizzard of angular movement before the still ranks of its audience, like a dragonfly pinned to some page of a royal Book of Hours.