Pawn in Frankincense (58 page)

The new Ambassador was on the rambade, where he had been walking for the past hour; up and down, his yellow hair soaked and tangled, his flying cloak ruined with salt. Despite the long summer’s sun and the sting of the wind, his skin above the dark cloak was as pale as a troglodyte’s, and marked faintly with stresses which had not been there when, six months ago, as Gaultier said, they had started their voyage.

Salablanca’s death, of course, had been a blow. There was concern for the girl. But more than that; with an effort of imagination one saw perhaps what it meant to take a year, virtually, out of one’s life to perform a duty towards two young unknown children, for whom one felt responsibility, but no bond: to leave the live world; one’s career, one’s affairs to spend empty days on land and on shipboard, travelling, waiting; being forced to wait for an object one did not even desire, except with one’s intellect. To Mr Crawford, the death of Sir Graham Reid Malett was the justification for such a waste. Now, he must feel the justification was indeed small.

Lymond had seen him. Buffeted by the wind, he came back slowly over the gangway and paused, his hand on the doorpost, his eyes on the food-laden table. ‘After all your effort,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Your Excellency will not dine?’

‘I think not,’ said Lymond. ‘Will you tell the captain I have gone below for a space? Call me, if you wül, in an hour.’

Onophrion Zitwitz, a man of great experience, looked at his master’s strained face and was of a sudden inspired. The injuries Lymond had received at Thessalonika had been treated that night by the Beglierbey’s own physician, and Lymond had not mentioned them since. But after the death of Salablanca the new Ambassador had had no personal aide to look after either his physical welfare or his grooming and both, all too obviously, had been neglected.

Onophrion Zitwitz, taking a calculated diplomatic risk, leaned forward and shut the door to the deck. ‘If Your Excellency will sit down,’ he said, with considerable firmness in that sedate, well-drilled voice, ‘I shall pour you some aqua-vitae and ask the barber-surgeon to come.’

‘What: for a blood-letting?’ said his master. But he left the door and sat down, with precision, where Jerott, drunk, had once sat; and after a moment, without speaking, dropped his head on his arms. So Onophrion, waiting neither for the barber-surgeon nor the spirits, unfastened Lymond’s cloak and as much as he could reach of his doublet, and slipping in his plump, soap-smelling hand, located the wad of stiff, fraying bandage which bound his right shoulder.

Without comment Onophrion withdrew his hand, and taking the sharpest of the knives which lay on the table, slit unhesitatingly through velvet and lawn and the bandage itself until he laid bare the neglected sword thrust, swollen, angry and raw.

Without moving, Lymond said, ‘Would it not be better below?’

Master Zitwitz looked at him. ‘If you can climb down, Your Excellency. The wound is poisoned.’

‘I began to think so,’ said Lymond. ‘But then it pained me only at intervals. It didn’t seem worth a commotion.’

With Onophrion Zitwitz there was never a commotion. In five minutes Lymond was below decks and the surgeon was on his way; and hot water; and Master Zitwitz had even, at the back of his mind, a menu for the small trayful of food he proposed bringing when the whole nasty business was over. Francis Crawford, prone on his bed, had not spoken since he arrived there.

Onophrion said, suddenly, ‘Bearing pain will not bring him back.’ And as Lymond twisted round, his eyes open, his face taut with angry astonishment, the steward recoiled and went on, as if no one had spoken, ‘If you will forgive me, sir: between here and Constantinople it will be impossible to keep Your Excellency’s shoulder dressed and your clothes as they should be without a personal servant. If Your Excellency would permit me to appoint one of my own men … I have trained him myself.…’

‘Appoint anyone you like,’ said Lymond; and flung himself back on his face.

Far from coming on deck in an hour, he did not appear again that day, or until half the next morning had gone. But when he did, the change was quite remarkable. With his fever dispelled; rested and groomed by his new servant Adrian and fed, at two-hourly intervals, by Onophrion’s solicitous hand, Lymond had recovered all the sangfroid that Gaultier most disliked. ‘Idleness: an excellent remedy, don’t you find it, M. Gaultier?
Il se gratte les fesses et conte des apologues
. Especially when one is fond of fables, as you and your niece undoubtedly are.… But there are snakes in the Valley of Diamonds, M. Gaultier; and a wind that turns stones into wax. And although you throw your meat into the valley, and release a thousand starving eagles, they may pick up the meat, but with no diamonds adhering.… Where is Marthe now, do you think?’

M. Gaultier, against his inclination, humoured him. ‘In Aleppo with Mr Blyth, I should suppose. Or on her way to Constantinople.’

‘With Mr Blyth, I wonder? They say,
Dammi con chi tu vivi
, M. Gaultier; and
to saprò quel’ che tu fai
. What do you suppose Marthe is doing?’

‘Filling in time, Mr Crawford: as are we all, until this interminable embassy is at an end.’

‘Patience, M. Gaultier. It is an Oriental virtue.
Empty thy head of wind, for none is born of his mother save to die. Wert thou a rampart of well-wrought iron, the rotation of the heavens would break thee none the less, and thou shouldst disappear.
’ The levity returned to the pleasant voice. ‘It is not, I am sure, a philosophy beloved of pawn-brokers.’

The weather improved. Tribute at Hellespont paid, they sailed between the two castles, and at Gallipoli they found M. Chesnau, the French Envoy to Constantinople of whom the Bektashi dervish at Thessalonika had spoken, held up by a fever of which his secretary had already died. Since he could not be moved, Lymond made what improvements he could in his housing and comforts and went on his way, his letters of credence as full Ambassador in his hands. They sailed by the Thracian coast, passing Rodesto and Perinthe and rowing all night to cross the Gulf of Selimbrie and get to the castles of Flora and St Stephano. From there, Lymond sent a horseman to warn d’Aramon, the retiring Ambassador, of his arrival.

A day later, the
Dauphiné
anchored at night below the Seven Towers, the State Prison of Stamboul; and in the morning rowed round the sea wall until, turning Seraglio Point, she entered the creek called the Golden Horn and stood off the Scarlet Apple of the World: the city of Constantinople at last.

In Topkapi, Kuzucuyum heard the guns and the trumpets, and screaming, ‘Bang-cass!’ in ecstasy, turned so fast he sat down. The Pearl of Fortune, hearing him, snatched him up, her shining hair flying, and flew with him to the highest viewpoint she was permitted; when cheek to cheek, they looked down together.

White and gold, the silk pennants ran, fluid as writing from the yardarms of the incoming ship, and the ensigns from her mastheads were of the same colour. Her screens were out amidships, of cloth of silver and gold, and green boughs garlanded her low flanks, below the slow sweep of the oars. Her very wake was silver, in the carmine sea of first dawning: silver clouds rose from her culverin and constellations flashed from her trumpets as she repeated over and over her salutes.

There was a spyglass Philippa, in the person of Pearl of Fortune, had cajoled from a silly lassie from Candía in exchange for a Newcastle kerchief. Putting the glass to her eye, she maintained it firmly against the fat hands of Kuzúm, and peering through the joggling lens, focused over the tops of the kiosks and cypress trees, on the shining strip of water, peopled with caique and galley and galleasse, with ships of war and commerce and pleasure, of fishing and ferrying, until she found again the newcomer she had been watching.

It was a galley. It was a royal galley sliding in at the salute, oars upraised and parallel. And above it there unrolled, white and gold and dearly familiar, the lily banner of France. The glass swept from Philippa’s face and she dragged it back again. ‘
Kuzúm!
Not now! In a moment, my lamb. In a moment.… Oh,
please
!’

It steadied, and she saw again what she had glimpsed. On the mainmast was the royal standard of France. On the mizzen was the coat of arms, in blue and silver and scarlet, of Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny.

With fearful suddenness, Kuzucuyum found himself in full
possession of the disputed spyglass. ‘Hullo?’ he said uneasily, surveying what he could see of his Fippy.

With children, you have no private life. ‘Hullo,’ said Philippa reassuringly. ‘It’s all right. I … banged my hand.’

The vast blue gaze turned anxious. ‘Is it a little just a scratch?’ said Kuzúm.

‘Yes … it’s all right,’ said Philippa. ‘Let’s go and have breakfast.’

‘Kiss it butter?’ said Kuzúm, who was nothing if not thorough. He delivered the kiss, bending his brushed yellow head, and then turned the appraising gaze on her again. ‘Is it all butter now, Fippy: is it?’

‘It’s all better, my lambkin,’ said Philippa. ‘It’s all better; or if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter a docken.’

Later that morning, anchored off Seraglio Point, Lymond received on board the Deputy Vizier and the Chief Dragoman of the Porte, and accepted for himself and his principal staff five exquisite sets of full-length Turkish robes.

The gifts from the French King, carefully graded and labelled, had already been checked and prepared during the last days of the voyage. The Dragoman and the Vizier, expressing unqualified delight, in turn received theirs, and after drinking, with no sign of theological uneasiness, a full bottle of Onophrion’s Mudanian wine, departed with formal expressions of goodwill all round.

‘We are in time?’ asked Onophrion, at length, coming to clear off the goblets.

‘We are in time,’ said Lymond, turning his eyes from the slow-moving domes; the packed houses, climbing shoulder on shoulder; the white minarets like cactus-fingers crowding the skyline; the old pink and cream sea wall and the green of the gardens and trees, seen through the empty, tiered eyes of the aqueduct of Valens. ‘Sultan Suleiman will receive us on Tuesday.’

They had been given three members of the Corps of Janissaries for the length of their stay, to act as guides, interpreters, advisers and bodyguard all in one. They visited the Customhouse, briefly; then, turning her back on the gold and copper cupolas of Stamboul, the
Dauphiné
crossed the Golden Horn to Galata.

Built by the Genoese and still the foreign trading-quarter of the great city opposite, Galata sat on one ear on its hillside, locked within its tight walls and protected by the many-eyed tower which rose high in its midst. On the shore, by the wharves and the crumbling warehouses, the sheds for ship-building and artillery, the big trading-galleons lay shoulder to shoulder, their jutting rudders and flat, pear-shaped sterns staring down at the long, slender galley as she rowed smoothly past. She tied up at Artillery Gate, where the great bronze cannon from Rhodes and Tripoli and Gozo and Mohács lay
unheeded in the long, weedy grass; and M. d’Aramon, Baron de Luetz, present Ambassador and longtime good servant of France in the Sublime Porte, walked forward from the quay where he and his suite had been waiting, and came aboard to greet his successor.

A man of tact, he gave no sign that he might be comparing the unconscious, half-naked prisoner of Tripoli with the man who came to receive him on deck, his short fair hair ordered and gleaming, his hands ringed, his doublet made by a master. The preliminaries, graceful as they were, did nothing to dispel the little ironies he still perceived and enjoyed, in the back of his mind. Then M. Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, seating him where the Second Vizier had so lately sat and presenting him, through Onophrion, with an extraordinarily good cup of Muscat, began to ask questions about the status of France in the great Turkish empire; and the shade of amusement left M. d’Aramon’s face.

Long ago by the post; by the interminable exchange of secretary and messenger from Stamboul to Sofia to Ragusa to Venice; across Europe to Anet or Fontainebleau, he had known of this slow, seaborne embassy, and of the elaborate gift which might reach the Sultan in time to sweeten his mind towards France; to persuade him to send Dragut and all his fleet of renegade seamen and corsairs to support France’s attack on Florence and Corsica.

Now it was here; and the Sultan, accepting it, was about to march into Persia to light a war of more moment to him than a petty investment in France’s affairs was ever likely to be. The timing was bad: one had to accept it; and join in the cultivated and slightly derisory laughter, and make capital out of the pleasures or trials of the voyage.

It surprised the Baron de Luetz to be asked questions: perfectly permissable questions, courteously framed, and with no malicious intent. It surprised him still more to find his answers the subject of speculative discussion, bulwarked by a formidable massif of facts. Somewhere on the
Dauphiné
, on her dilatory journey from home, there was a tireless mind which had made it its business to observe, analyse and digest; and for whose findings the Baron began to feel considerable respect.