Pawn in Frankincense (39 page)

She had a pair of buckles from her old shoes. Kate had bought them in Newcastle because they looked like two snakes in silver, and therefore very seemly, said Gideon, for Somervilles. Philippa brought them out before her worse nature could catch up with her better and, kneeling, put them quickly on the little bride’s lap.

It was clear that the girl had no idea whatever what they were for, and Philippa, whose Turkish and Arabic were prodigious, had, except for esoteric pronouncements of love, no suitable phrases in Greek. Smiling broadly and firmly, she got her roses and backed, until she was within reasonable distance of the spit with the wild boar on it, and then sat swallowing nobly until the feasting began.

When the Pilgrims left, they set off in moonlight, with the villagers for their escort until they had reached the main track. They had
danced the Romeika and the Candiote, the Wallachian and the Arnaoute; they had sung, they had told stories and long poems; there had been laughter and drinking. Between Greek Christians and the Pilgrims of Love there was no barrier, Philippa found. The Pilgrims, their philosophy Arabian, their arts Persian and Turkish, embraced love and merriment as the Greeks did; and the Greek nature responded.

The Pilgrims played. The lyrist walked ahead of them, showing the way, his rough three-stringed lyre like an old rebec, held and plucked at arm’s length: behind, torches flickered and laughter sparked around the little mule as Philippa rode along, talking to the villagers who thronged on foot around her with Míkál as her interpreter. They ask what years thou hast, and from where thou comest, and where is thy husband?’

‘Tell them I’m sixteen, and I come from the Border between England and Scotland, and I’m not married,’ said Philippa. She had spent her birthday in the Lazaretto at Zakynthos, and they had taught Sheemy Wurmit’s moulting parrot to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ as a surprise, and she had been so pleased she cried.… ‘Why hast thou no husband?’ added Míkál.

The inquiry, it seemed, was on his own account. Philippa stared down at him, astonished. He said, ‘In thy country girls marry, do they not, at fourteen; at fifteen? Thou hast nothing? No lover, no sweetheart at home?’

Philippa choked, and covered it up as well as she could, dismissing the image of some stiff-necked young Tynesider, cap in hand, knocking at Flaw Valleys’ front door. ‘I’m Philippa’s intended, ma’am. May I come in?’ And her mother’s expression.

She said, ‘I can’t think why, Míkál; but when I was at home we didn’t think of it; and of course I’ve been travelling since.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Míkál, ‘one must travel to find what is love.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Philippa stoutly, ‘one must travel to find what is kindness. I know what is——I know what love is.’

‘Thou knowest the love of old women,’ said Míkál. He sounded cross. The youngsters who had been running at her side had moved away, tired of the foreign speech. He said, ‘I read thee Anvari, Jelál and thou dost not tremble. 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.’ In the torchlight, the deep, dark eyes opened on hers. ‘Khátún, what is his face?’

‘A lemon?’ said Philippa.

Much later that night, when they had spread their mattresses at a farm which had made them all welcome, and all was silent at last, Philippa wrote up her diary.
We are close now, I think. The Children passed through quite recently. They took the bride’s little brother Philocles, but no one spoke of it except to extol the brave new life he
would have. I have had two poems addressed to my liver. I have solved a mystery. Do you remember the boy in the buttery who grew a hairline moustache when he was courting, and lost a sock in the milk? That, my dear, is a four-eyebrowed beauty
.

You didn’t ever happen to mention, Kate dear, whether you wished to start curing a son-in-law ready to lay in, so I take it you don’t. I very much don’t, rather. I want to grow old and sour all by myself, at Flaw Valleys, modelled on my old and sour mother. Anyway, who could be sure of a husband in this country? Sneaking off, for all one knew, to some four-eyebrowed lout in the buttery.…

They caught up with the Children of Devshirmé on the outskirts of Thessalonika. Since the night of the wedding Míkál had been less adhesive, though he spent a little time eliciting precisely her interest and indeed her irritating single-mindedness on the subject of this unknown child Khaireddin.

He received no satisfaction, since Philippa had no satisfaction to give. Kate approved of the child’s father, and so did she. Kate all her life had championed the underdog, and so therefore did she. And what more oppressed puppy in all the world was she likely to find than this one?

‘It is a crusade,’ said Míkál at last. O Soul Sensible, when wilt thou waken?’

Philippa knew that one.
There are three degrees of souls: Soul Vegetable, Soul Animal and Soul Sensible. Common Sense is a pond into which the five streams of the outer senses flow. Soul Sensible has two faculties: Virtue Motive and Virtue Apprehensive
. Virtue Apprehensive. ‘He’ll have grown. They change a lot. You maybe won’t know him,’ said Philippa.

‘He may be dead,’ said Míkál, hopefully. ‘If he is dead, where shall we go?’

They were testing the tribute-money by the Arch of Galerius. As each person brought forward his tax, the
gümüsh-arayân
, or silver-searchers, weighed the coins, and then poured them into the little oven within the big iron charcoal-burner. The metal was red-hot, but in spite of the fumes and the blistering air the people of Thessalonika pressed round, watching uneasily. No one would expect all the coins to be true. But over a certain proportion of base metal and double the fee must be paid in these little horned aspers, with their message drawn in the silver:
KING OF KINGS, RULING OVER KINGS
.

Philippa reined in her mule. She had passed, at Míkál’s insistence, the tented city ringed with Janissaries which lay on the brown grass outside the walls. She must speak, said Mikal, to the Chief Commissar of Devshirmé, or to an Odabassy of Janissaries, at least. In this, the richest city of Thessaly, taking tribute would be a long
affair, conducted in the city itself by the Commissars and their clerks, with the Janissaries to keep discipline and the strong arm of the Sanchiach who, with his Spahis, governed Thessalonika for the Beglierbey, the Lieutenant-General who ruled over all Greece on behalf of the Sultan. So to the town, said Míkál, she must go in her turn to pay tribute and buy back the child.

She had seen his point; but was prepared to argue. How could he expect her to buy something she had not even seen? What if she could not find him; if he were not there; if they took her money and then denied his existence?

Last night Míkál had burnished his leopardskin and combed out his long, fine, dark hair. He had sung to himself, she thought, as if he were very happy, swaying his body so that the little bells of his sash and his dress accented the verses. Now, smiling and calling to those who greeted him in the press, he said, looking up in surprise, ‘Thou readest, Khátún. In the Commissars’ books each boy’s name is written, and his birth, and his price. He will be brought to you.’ And as the crowd opened out before them, and she found herself in the Via Egnatia, with the crowded figures of Galerius’s great arch alive in the sun, Míkál said, ‘Give me your money.’

And taking from her the gold which last night she had unpicked from all the hidden corners of her clothes and her baggage, he moved with his magnificent walk past the stinking heat of the brazier, and flung it, chiming, on the deal table where the Commissars sat. ‘The lady pays,’ said Míkál. Philippa, dismounting, followed him in a hurry and stood, panting, beside him.

‘For what does she pay?’ asked the Chief Commissar. He had black moustaches and wore a very white cottage loaf on his head. He had a long jewelled knife in his sash. Philippa opened her mouth and said in squeaky but impeccable Turkish, ‘I wish to buy back the boy-child bought of the merchant Marino Donati, Zakynthos.’

The Commissar’s small black-rimmed eyes studied her. ‘I see. The name of this child?’

‘His name is Khaireddin, or … I am told his nurse calls him Kuzucuyum. He is between one and two years old, with yellow hair,’ said Philippa. ‘If you will have the money counted, I am sure you will do us the honour to agree.’ There were twenty Venetian zecchinos in Míkál’s handkerchief lying there on the bench. Two thousand five hundred aspers. And a five-year-old girl had been bought the other day for five ducats.

The Commissar did not lift the handkerchief. He did not call for his registers or turn to his clerks. He said, ‘Take thy bounty. Alas, the child you mention cannot be resold.’

Philippa’s heart began to beat very heavily. She drew a long breath. ‘Thy pardon, lord; but I cannot think you know the child of whom I speak. He is of no account, base-born of Christian parents,
and too young as yet to train. I assure thee, if he is sold to me, there will result nothing but goodwill for the Sultan.’

The black eyes, narrowed against the sun, were not even derisory. ‘Through a base-born son of a Christian?’

Philippa took another enormous breath, which promptly evaporated, invisibly, through her pores. ‘His father,’ she said threadily, ‘is at this moment bearing to Stamboul for the Sultan a gift of some price from his master, the Most Christian King of France. To reunite son and father would be an act of which surely the Grand Seigneur would approve.’

The Commissar raised a finger. Released by the signal, the clerks opened their books; the slow procession of tax-payers began to move forward; the little weights clinked in the scales as the aspers were poured out for weighing. ‘The child you mention,’ said the Commissar briefly, ‘came from the harem of Dragut Rais at Algiers. I fear thou hast mistaken his origins. He is not for sale. You may have the aid of my Odabassy to find your way without harm out of the city. Allah be with thee.’

The gold thrust into her hand, she was dismissed. Philippa looked round wildly. Míkál had gone. The other pilgrims, intoxicated by the crowd, had already started to disperse: she could hear the bells and the cymbals and the laughter, in trickles and spurts, through all the noise of the throng. Her mule, unattended, had drifted to a stall selling mish-mish and was licking a bowl.

Philippa looked again at the table of Commissars. The chief, his back to her, was transacting some brisk matter of business; the rest, writing or questioning, had resumed the wearisome routine which had already occupied them, week after week. She realized that even if her voice were operating properly, making a scene was unlikely to do any good. To begin with, they held a low opinion, she knew, of women who conducted their own affairs. And to change one’s mind in public before one’s fellows was a thing no man would countenance.

Philippa shoved the gold under her veil, hoping her sash would prevent it from falling promptly straight down to her feet, and fought her way to her mule.

The saddlebags weren’t rifled. The stall-holder hadn’t even complained over the mish-mish. A Janissary, in his tall, white felt bonnet sat on horseback holding the reins of her mule. He wore a long knife tucked into his coat; a scimitar on his thigh, and a straight sword and a little axe on the side of his pommel, with a bow laid across the saddle-front and a quiver strung on his back. He carried a steel
gurj
, and as the wide sleeves slid back, she saw the mark of his
oda
, slit into the skin of his forearms with gunpowder. He had a silver quill driven straight through a pinch of skin above his left eyebrow and left there, like a one-eyed eagle owl, and his gaze bore an icy disfavour, like the gaze of a sergeant inspecting a constant
deserter. He said, ‘If it please thee to mount. We are in haste.’

Philippa took a last quick look round. No Míkál. Well: his business was love, not argument and the rough ways of the military. At the gates, when they freed her, she would no doubt discover the Pilgrims. And between them, surely, they would hit on a way of tracing the child in that seething city of tents. If she could have him no other way, she was quite ready to steal him, Janissaries or nothing. What was a Janissary, said Philippa (to herself) stoutly, when one had made the acquaintance in Scotland of the Crawfords, the Scotts and the Kerrs? She mounted; and, the corps falling in quickly behind, she and the Odabassy rode in silence out of the city.

Outside the gates, she was irritated and also uneasy to see, there was no Míkál either, and the other Pilgrims of Love were conspicuous by their absence. Her thin lips tight, Philippa looked up at the Odabassy, whose ambling pace had not changed, and said, ‘I fear sir, my friends are not here; but if thou wilt set me by some honest house, I shall remain there till they find me.’

The silver quill turned in her direction. ‘Presently,’ said the Odabassy; and rode speechlessly on.

‘For example, that house?’ said Philippa, risking it, after five minutes more.

‘Presently,’ said the Odabassy; and continued to ride.

‘I think,’ said Philippa, ‘I should like to stop
now.
’ And she pulled, hard, on the reins.