Pawn in Frankincense (33 page)

Marthe, her airy sarsenet breathing over the marble floors; her unbound hair caught behind each ear with an ivory comb, bent over the pans of still water and said, ‘If, as I assume, you wished to dispatch Mr Crawford out of earshot, you may rest assured: you have.’

Kiaya Khátún’s eyes, amused, studied the girl for a moment; but Kiaya Khátún’s voice, undisturbed, concluded her song.

‘I know,’ said Güzel cheerfully, laying down her lute. ‘He was here earlier, watching Youssef. Extraordinary, is it not, how he cannot bear music? Here, in the land of the Lotophagi, where we
should make love and live of the dew, and the juice of flowers and roses.… And you, as well as Odysseus, are discontented.’

Youssef, laying his papers aside, had risen slowly from his low stool, and bending over the nearest water-tray, was preparing his pots of pigment. As the girl watched, he stirred the water with his finger, and set swimming upon it, drop by drop, the oily colours: cerulean and indigo, maize, russet, umber and aubergine; spot by spot merging, blending, coalescing and shoaling, in forms elliptic and cycloid; into whorl and veining under the soft, titillating finger. ‘Can he hear your music?’ said Marthe.

‘Youssef has no tongue. He cannot speak; but he can hear,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘Does it not please you, to live in the company of such men? Your young, dark-haired friend is learning to recognize that he is in love with you. You should consider him.’

‘Should I?’ said Marthe. Beside her, the old man had shaken drops of sage and vermilion on his water-mosaic. She watched him shape them. ‘Poppies,’ she said. ‘Güzel, they are beautiful. This and your music … you have happiness. Why cannot I find it?’

‘Because you do not look in the right places,’ said Kiaya. ‘But why consult me? I only give you advice which you do not take. Look, he is placing the paper now on the water.’

Marthe did not look. In a voice which she could not quite prevent from shaking, ‘Jerott Blyth is
nothing
,’ she said. ‘I would choose a cur, a cat, a house goose for company sooner.’

‘He is a man,’ said Güzel quietly.

Silence fell. His arms bare, his movements smooth with the skill that defeats age, Youssef lifted the sheet of paper floating on the colour-skeined water and, turning it dyed side uppermost, laid it flat.

On a groundwork of delicate veining, a handful of poppies glowed, their vermilion petals and green leaves spiralling in an echoing mosaic of colour. Her eyes full of tears, looking at it, Marthe repeated, ‘It is beautiful. Is there nothing for me?’

Her fine eyes watching the girl, ‘What about Odysseus?’ said Kiaya Khátún.

Marthe turned away, and moved to the door. ‘He is not a man,’ she said. ‘He is Chaos, a mythical bird with a name, but no body; agreeable only to the eye of the mind.… The Aga Morat’s tents have come back.’

‘He finds the plains here suit his cavalry trainers.… Recognize him, then, with your mind. Why not? Two cold temperaments may consort well together.’

Marthe looked round. ‘There is a saying: When two hungry people lie together, a beggar is born. He will get what he will get; and so shall I.… Shall I play for you?’ And taking the lute Kiaya quietly held out, the girl Marthe sat, her face pale with the heat, and added
crisply, ‘If I serenade Mr Crawford, perhaps it will make my regard for him plainer.’

She had a high voice; not trained as was Güzel’s, but tuneful and pure. Through the still heat of Djerba the words floated with an almost professional clarity:

At the end, ‘It is a way of life you defend,’ said Kiaya Khátún, unmoved. ‘But not necessarily a good one.’

She said no more, although the old man Youssef, limping forward as Marthe left, laid in her hands, still shining, the chambletted picture of poppies. Marthe thanked him, and moved out of sight through the courtyard before, with trembling fingers, she tore it across and across.

Presently, for the mistress of Dragut’s palace was nothing if not purposeful, there arrived the hour Kiaya Khátún had determined to devote to her principal prisoner. This time she took some trouble, as she had not done with Marthe, to ensure that there should be no witnesses.

In the past weeks the woman whose name was Güzel had had several exchanges with Francis Crawford, about whom she knew something from a great many sources.

She was also well aware that this prolonged captivity, with heat, boredom and frustration, was undermining the nerves of some of her prisoners. For their own reasons, Marthe and Jerott Blyth quite evidently were finding it hardest to bear. Onophrion Zitwitz, who within two days had deferentially taken over her kitchens and marketing, clearly found in these activities some relief from his anxieties. Gaultier, with a placidity she found a little irritating, drifted quite unworried into a pleasant routine which took him from room to room, admiring the lavish fruits of Dragut’s plunder: aligning an ivory here; correcting a timepiece there; replacing, with loving care, a fallen jewel in its setting. Time to Georges Gaultier alone, it seemed, was of no moment: first of all the company he had eaten the lotus.

To the casual eye, the same seemed at first true of Lymond.
Certainly, in none of their exchanges so far had any intemperate word passed between prisoner and captor. She found him outrageously charming, and cleverer by far than she had expected. She discovered that she was being sounded, with great skill, on a number of subjects, and it was early established, without discomfort on either side, that she was not amenable to bribes nor to any equivalent service he might offer her. He was to remain under duress, without concessions, for precisely as long as Dragut might choose.

After that discussion, she saw him less. The first key had failed. With skill and adroitness, he proceeded to try all the rest. But her servants, as she well knew, could not be suborned. Dragut’s hand fell too heavily for that. The guard on the galley was impregnable, and so was the watch on the causeway. In any case, he had no money—she had seen to that: the saddles taken carefully to pieces, the quilting unpicked. He had been carrying a sum which would outfit Dragut’s fleet next winter.

What he did next, in fact, was nearly to escape her. Blyth was not yet recovered. Knowing, she supposed, that she would not touch a sick man, and that Gaultier and his niece from an old friendship were safe from her, he had laid his plans with precision, informing nobody, and after half killing a guard one moonless night had swum out to the fishing fleet, one of whose members, at market one day, had not been immune to promises. Mr Francis Crawford had been three miles out of the bay when they had caught him: she had allowed them some latitude in subduing him. Dragut had said only that he should not, if possible, be killed. The fisherman had been ganched.

That had been four days ago, and she had not sent for him until now. Dragut had had made for her, Turkish-style, a kiosk in one of the gardens, its walls set with mother-of-pearl and pierced to admit the faintest airs from rose and hyacinth, mint and lemon and thyme.

Inside, around three of the walls ran a low silk-covered divan, full of cushions: in the centre, the floor was made of glass, below which a channel of fresh water ran. In hot weather the voice of the brooklet was cooling. In winter it flooded the kiosk, and the divan grew grey mould. You cannot, thought Kiaya Khátún with regret, have everything. She sat down among the cushions, her bracelets tinkling, and listened for Francis Crawford, her painted feet crossed.

His footfall was fight, but Güzel heard it coming; even heard the hesitation, at one point, between step and step. She said, raising her voice, ‘Don’t, I pray you, give way to nostalgia. This is not Algiers.’ As she finished, he appeared in the doorway.

‘Of course it isn’t Algiers,’ said Lymond, his voice brittle with hard-controlled temper. ‘Algiers is full of fat Turks.’

They stared at one another. Heavy bruising was evident on one side of his face, and there were cuts on his eyebrow and lip. He
didn’t limp, but a stiffness suggested itself under the light Arab clothes he wore; the white cotton, loosely tied at the waist, fell clear to the ground.

‘You wish me to respect your sensibilities?’ said Güzel. ‘You behaved ill-advisedly, and your ally has been punished. You are fortunate that Dragut Rais is not here, or someone’s life would equally be forfeited for the guard whom you attacked. I make it clear now that if there is any repetition your steward Zitwitz will be bastinadoed to death. Not one of your colleagues, Mr Crawford, but your servant.’ She paused. ‘I wonder where you obtained the ring you gave to the fisherman?’

Standing still in the doorway, his eyes veiled: ‘You know, surely,’ said Lymond. ‘It came from my newly betrothed. Now let’s go and ganch
him
, liver, lungs, tripes and trillibubs, and add a last of seal’s fat to the commonweil?’

‘Sit,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘I find rhetoric tiresome.’

Lymond crossed the glass floor, paused by the shot-silk upholstery opposite her, and sank down, with some care, among the cushions. ‘But the situation breeds rhetoric,’ he said. ‘Like fleas in a bucket of pigswill.…
Make thou fast, Gabriel, the gates of hell
. For example.’

‘Thank you,’ said Güzel.

‘Not at all. The food, however,’ said Lymond, dispassionately, ‘is excellent. They shall not hear therein vain or sinful discourse, except the word Peace, Peace. Continue. I have been extinguished red-hot in vinegar and am tempered to talk. It’s a nice day.’

‘The King of England is dying,’ said Güzel. ‘If Mary Tudor is Queen and dies childless, Margaret Lennox will succeed her.’

Unblinking, Lymond spoke softly. ‘Who says so?’

‘The court. Of all women, she is Queen Mary’s favourite, and Elizabeth is a bastard. Then Lennox rules Scotland.’

‘He may,’ said Lymond. ‘Until I have killed Gabriel.’

‘There is more,’ said Kaiya Khátún, blandly. ‘The French army is in confusion; the French fallen back from Thérouanne, and Seigneur d’Essé slaughtered. The King, they say, speaks only to Mistress Diane and St André, and not at all to the Constable. The fate of your company is not so far known.’

‘I shall find them,’ said Lymond. ‘When I have killed Gabriel.’

‘There is more.… Hugh Willoughby is sailing for the Frozen Sea by the palace of Ivan Vasilovich, Emperor of Russia, to find the courts of the Great Cham of China. Sir Thomas Wyndham goes with two royal ships to the Gold Coast, hoping to capture Portuguese trade with the Orient. Cabot tries still to sell his secret routes to the Emperor. De Villegagnon goes to begin a new life in Brazil.… And if Gabriel kills you first?’

‘It will all go on,’ said Lymond. ‘With someone else. The waters
recede, leaving a fruitful mud behind them. And I shall be immediately reborn as the son of a Brahman. Your last steady position, I take it, was with Gabriel?’

Kiaya Khátún lifted shapely black eyebrows. ‘My advice is disinterested. The price of Gabriel’s death seems a little inflated.’

‘And what of the boy?’ said Lymond lazily. ‘Three empires and a fortune in our grasp but for him! He will never appreciate it.’

Güzel said, ‘You do not even know if he is whole.’

‘He does not even know that I exist,’ said Lymond.

She rose. ‘That seems important?’

‘To me,’ said Lymond, ‘that seems equal to the sorrows of Job. I’ve enjoyed this so much. You must visit
my
kiosk.’ He rose, straightening his shoulders. ‘Give your masters my compliments. How did you come to look for me with the fleet?’

Kiaya Khátúm smiled. ‘Every camp has its traitor,’ she said. ‘Yours is no exception. Goodbye.’