Pawn in Frankincense (40 page)

A strong hand, coming from beside her right elbow, reached up and taking the reins clean out of her grip, flicked the little mule on. Blazing scarlet under her veil, Philippa swung round on the Odabassy. ‘The orders of thy Commissar were to set me outside the gates of Thessalonika!’

The quill turned and inspected her, with lofty indifference. ‘My orders, Khátún, are to bring thee immediately for questioning to the presence of my lord the Beglierbey of all Greece.’

The Viceroy of Greece had been hunting. That indeed was the purpose of this modest lodging in Thessaly; and to preserve his vigour for primary demands, he had brought only two or three of his seraglio with him. The courtyard of the viceregal house, when Philippa entered it, perforce with her Janissaries, was full of dogs: not the flop-eared mongrels, shaggy as Cretans, which she had seen in every village since Petrasso, but white greyhounds, large and slender, their legs and tails stained red with kinàh. She saw some hawks, hooded, being taken indoors, and the small horses, mixed Tartar and Arab, whom she saw being led away by the saisies, had drums hung on the pommels.

The grooms were Berberine. The servants she saw moving in and out of the stables and service buildings which lined three sides of the yard, were of aggressively mixed stock, a great many of them coloured, and some of them walking in chains. She was prepared to be angry when she saw that all the faces which turned towards her in the bustle of the courtyard were perfectly cheerful and instead of angry she became frightened, at the kind of servitude which could bring resignation and active acceptance so easily in its train. She dismounted, and led by the Odabassy, walked up to the tall timbered building, overhung with galleries and enlaced with admonishing texts, which occupied the fourth side of the courtyard.

In the doorway, an Ethiopian awaited her; quite different from the Moors she had seen carrying saddles outside: a big man, his glossy black skin sheathed in lawn and a pale figured weave. As he dismissed her escort and turned, signing her to follow him, Philippa saw the rings on his plump fingers and thought, suddenly, he is a eunuch. Then he opened the door of the selamlik, and stood aside as she walked in.

The room was vacant. It was bigger than any she had yet seen. In the centre of the floor was an elaborate brazier, now empty, set in a pattern of tiles. All the rest of the room was a dais covered in carpets, on which thick mattresses, two or three deep, had been piled at intervals round the far wall, and heaped invitingly with coloured silk cushions in each window embrasure. The walls were white, with a calligraphic frieze of phrases from the Qur’ân picked out in blue and gilt:
Hasten to forgiveness from your Lord: and to a garden
.

Philippa smiled, her wrestling hands stopped for a moment; then, folding her arms solidly over her stomach, she stumped up the three little steps to the dais and marched to one of the windows. All right: they liked flowers. They liked music. They liked animals and birds. You never saw a badly used dog; and the granaries in Cairo, so they said, were never closed from the sky, so that the pigeons might feed when they chose. But they killed by ganching and slicing and cautery, and by doing what they had done to the woman Oonagh O’Dwyer.

Philippa gazed down on the kitchen courtyard. There were serving-women there; one or two; and a big marble bath full of water, and some cloths laid out bleaching on the sparse grass by the wall. Underneath her some shallow trays were also spread in the sun, filled with a golden mess she did not at once recognize. Then the open lattice under her fingers stirred against a warm breath of air, and the perfume of peaches pressed into the room.

She had tasted that in Larissa … peach jam, confected by sun-heat alone cooking the trays of ripe peaches and sugar and syrup as they lay, day after day.… If they would not sell her the child it meant, of course, that Gabriel had found out and warned them.
Perhaps the merchant Donati, writing another of his bills of lading, had described his strange visitors too well. Perhaps Sheemy Wurmit, arrived in Malta to discredit Graham Malett, had told too much too soon, and Gabriel had been able to send his instructions.…

She was English, and allied to Spain, Turkey’s most implacable enemy. Turkey had nothing to lose, materially or politically, by her death. She had wondered, working it out, why the Beglierbey’s sanction was necessary, until she recalled mentioning that a French embassy to the Sultan was involved. Just at present, Turkey did not wish to fall out with France. There was a chance, then; a slim one; if she could persuade the Viceroy that this child was indeed the son of the King of France’s Special Envoy. Or were Gabriel’s services so valuable that, in spite of that, he could persuade the Turks to do anything that he asked?

A child had come into the yard, jostled by three lambs on a string. It held them with difficulty, its fat bare feet braced in the dirt, and shrieked with delight, its shirt of striped Joseph silk smeared with their muzzles. Inside the kitchen a woman spoke sharply.

The child heard, too. Philippa saw its capped head turn, rocking its balance; as it tried to recover, the lambs tugged, ears flopping, pink tongues out, baaing, and pulled the string from its fists. It sat down, its back straight, its hat tipped over its eyes, its mouth an enormous O of astonishment. While Philippa watched, the O became a chinless and ecstatic grin. In three difficult stages it got to its feet, knocked its hat off, stared round and located the vaulting tails of its charges and directed itself after them, making up in noise and enthusiasm what it lacked in technique.

It looked down, Philippa noticed, as it stepped into the first tray of jam, hesitated, and for a moment was even in danger of sitting. Then, with admirable devotion to duty, it stepped into the other four trays without pausing and pursuing the clear imprint of twelve jammy hooves over the bleaching cloths, heeled precariously round the gate into the garden and disappeared, followed by a growing number of adults. The last Philippa saw of it was a flash of wary blue eyes, a hamster grin, and a cone of thick yellow hair, resting levelly on its belligerent eyebrows. Under her veil, Philippa’s larynx shrank to a pinhead and her eyes swam with unwanted water. She snorted.

‘I speak,’ said a voice behind her in English, ‘to Mees Somerville?’

You cannot whirl round in a floor-length robe and two veils. Achieving the change of direction with dignity, Philippa found herself opposite an elderly Imam quite unknown to her: a soft-skinned Turk in the turban of the Haji who has made the sacred journey to Mecca, his grey beard brushing white woollen robes, his prayer beads hanging in his sash. He smiled. ‘Forgive me: I frighten you,’ he said. ‘I am Bektashi Baba, an elder follower of Haji Bektash Veli, of whom you may have heard. The Beglierbey, who prays to be
excused, has asked me to see you. You will do me the honour to seat yourself and take qahveh?’

Now where, thought Philippa, seating herself warily on a pile of fat cushions, have I heard that before? And then she remembered: the house of the Dame de Doubtance in Lyons, and the harsh voice saying, ‘My cousin will bring you some
qahveh
, which you will dislike until your taste is formed.’ Philippa sat very straight, remembering not to pull on her veil, until the tray was brought with two cups by a Greek slave in a snowy tunic and laid on a small stool before her; and the Bektashi Baba, slipping out of his soft shoes, climbed the three shallow steps and, after seeking permission, seated himself at a discreet distance on the same divan. The slave poured the hot coffee, and waiting as Míkál had taught her until he had left, she unhooked her veil and lifted the cup.

It was the same aromatic burnt mud. Nostalgia poured in on her. She set her jaw and drank, as the Bektashi Baba smiled again and gently spoke. ‘Now, my child, you will tell me everything and I shall help you. Why you, an English girl, should travel alone with the Pilgrims, inquiring after a base-born child you have never met.… This is true, is it not?

‘Everyone keeps asking me that,’ said Philippa, peevishly. ‘It can’t be so very rare to find a child sent for tribute by mistake. I’m trying to buy it back before anyone gets into trouble, that’s all.’ She put down her cup. ‘You didn’t frighten me, but I just wondered how you knew my name.’
Attack, little flower
, Kate had said calmly to a tear-stained Philippa once, after an inquisitorial visit from a much-hated aunt.
Answer rude questions with naïve questions as near to the bone as you can get them
.

On Bektashi Babas, the technique had no effect. Her companion merely raised bushy grey eyebrows and said, ‘From Míkál, naturally, I learn it. The matter interests the Beglierbey, for his information from the merchant Donati led us to believe that the child was a godson of a Knight of St John. You have told the Commissars this is not so. It is possible therefore that the child you seek is not the one brought from the merchant Donati.’

‘The child I seek,’ said Philippa with brittle clarity, ‘is between one and two years old, is called Khaireddin, and is branded with the mark of Dragut Rais, in whose harem he was placed when he was born. He was sent from Algiers to Mario Donati in Zakynthos when Dragut left Algiers to sail east in the autumn. He is the son of M. le Comte de Sevigny, the Special Envoy of France now in process of conveying a valuable gift from His Most Christian Majesty to the Grand Seigneur at the Sublime Porte. The boy is a love-child, but one by whom the Envoy sets great store. If anything were to prevent his purchasing the child, I am sure he would feel bound to mention it at court on his return.’

The Bektashi Baba smoothed his beard but his eyes, Philippa was furious to see, were indulgent. ‘I see. And the child you seek: did this boy have a nurse? Or was he in the care of his mother?’

Careful. Philippa said, ‘His mother’s dead now, but I don’t think she took much to do with him after he was born. He was looked after by a negress called Kedi.’

‘I see,’ said the Bektashi Baba again. He rose, and walking barefooted over the thick carpets, paced to the tall window and gazed out. Then, his frail fingers on the lattice, he turned and looked thoughtfully at Philippa. ‘Daughter, forgive me, but I must tell you that this is not the same child. The boy sent us by the merchant Donati was born in Zakynthos, and spent only some months in the household of Dragut Rais in Algiers before being sent back to the House of the Palm Tree. He bears the brand of Dragut, it is true, and his age could be as much or as little as you say. But he had no nurse with him when he arrived; and his present guardian calls him by the child-name he has always borne: Kuzucuyum. Also, all these arrangements I have spoken of, and all the instructions concerning his placing in the harem at the Sublime Porte, have come to the merchant Donati from Malta. Of a Comte de Sevigny there has been no mention till now.’

Philippa went scarlet. ‘Of course there hasn’t!’ she said; and scrambling up, to an unregarded rending of cotton, marched to where the Baba stood at the window. ‘Because Graham Reid Malett doesn’t want his father to have him! Don’t you
see
?’ said Miss Somerville, shoving the second veil back from her perspiring forehead, and glaring at the amused, bearded face. ‘They hate each other, Sir Graham and the child’s father. Sir Graham is only trying to hide the boy so that Mr Crawford won’t get him; and Signor Donati is helping.… It remains to be seen,’ said Philippa with sudden and awful dignity, ‘whether the Grand Seigneur considers the friendship of a Knight of St John or that of the kingdom of France better worth having.’

‘It is a grave dilemma,’ the Bektashi Baba agreed. ‘Too grave indeed to be quickly dismissed.… You say the putative father is to be in Stamboul directly. The merchant Donati should not find it impossible to convey the problem also to the putative godfather. Thus it may be legally settled at the end of our journey, and not hastily out of hand and insufficiently informed as at present.… You know where M. le Comte de Sevigny, for example, is at present?’

‘I think I can find him,’ she said. Like mice whipping cheese from a trap, thoughts flashed through her head.

‘With Míkál’s help, and perhaps the services of a Janissary, you will then be able to place the difficulty before the French Envoy too. An excellent solution, is it not?’ said the Baba. ‘And meanwhile we shall carry the child to Stamboul, where all will be settled.’

They were going to let her go. No, they probably wanted her to go, under guard, in case she tried to make off with the child. In any case, they were prepared to let her free into the Christian world with the information that a Knight of St John was in friendly communication with the Turks.

Which meant … which meant, thought Philippa quickly, that they either knew Graham Malett’s reign in Malta was reaching an end, or wished it to reach an end soon. They had found out perhaps that Gabriel’s spying had been discovered by Archie and Sheemy? Or perhaps he was simply outgrowing his uses in Malta, and they wished to have his interest in Constantinople? In any case, she wasn’t getting the child. They would take it to Stamboul … a journey of weeks at this rate. And meantime, unless Archie stopped him, Lymond would meet and kill Gabriel at this place called Zuara.