Pawn in Frankincense (59 page)

Whatever the aforesaid pleasures and trials of his voyage, Crawford, it was clear, had made it his business to talk to many people, from the eminent to the most casual trader and mercenary. To his observations on the struggle in Italy between France and the Emperor Charles, M. d’Aramon could add his own latest news from dispatches. To his information, political, commercial and social, on the outposts and subject countries of the great Turkish empire, M. d’Aramon found he had little to add. He said, as the unloading went on around them, and the Muscat level slowly receded, ‘May I say, Mr Crawford, that I believe you have chosen a career for which you are decidedly suited?’

The unexcited blue gaze widened, sceptically. ‘Merry Report the Vice, court-crier and squire for God’s precious body? It is an appointment I can hold, I’m afraid, only briefly.… I am told there is some unrest in the army, and that is why the Sultan has decided to march south himself?’

‘That is the rumour.’ M. d’Aramon shifted a little in his chair. For the past week, on this score, the Corps Diplomatique had had to exercise considerable tact. ‘The Seraglio, you will understand, is sealed from the world, and very little is heard unless the Grand Seigneur wishes it. But it seems that the army marched south in the late summer under Rustem Pasha, the Grand Vizier, less to attack than to defend the eastern borders against some inroads made by the Shah. On the way they passed through Amasiya, where Prince Mustafa, the Sultan’s eldest son and his heir, rules the region.…’

‘You speak of the son, not of Roxelana, the Sultan’s present wife, but of his first concubine Gulbehar?’

D’Aramon nodded. ‘He is, nevertheless, as you know, the heir. His wife and son are not in the harem but at Bursa, on the other side of the Bosphorus and he himself, until he succeeds his father as Sultan, will live elsewhere and administer the Sultan’s Asian lands. He is, in my belief, a modest and able young man. But——’

‘But this autumn the Sultan, here in Constantinople, found reason to believe that Prince Mustafa and the army were conspiring against him?’

The Baron de Luetz rose; and walking to the door, pulled back the hide curtain which gave them privacy from the labouring seamen on deck. There was no one within earshot. Nevertheless he left it open, and when he returned to his seat, his voice was pitched low. ‘May I ask how you knew that?’

‘I am naught but the lewd compilator of the labour of old astrologians. I guessed it,’ said the new Ambassador mildly. ‘What I don’t know is, how did Suleiman hear of it?’

There was a little silence. Then, ‘That is not known,’ d’Aramon said quietly.

‘I see,’ said the younger man, tranquilly. ‘But it is true, is it not, that Rustem Pasha is married to Roxelana’s daughter?’

‘That is so.’ He had it, damn him.

‘I have even heard,’ pursued his host softly, ‘that the Grand Vizier was Roxelana’s first … employer?’

‘It may be true,’ said M. d’Aramon.

‘I have a petition of my own to present to the Sultan on Tuesday,’ said Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, with no change of tone. ‘It will, I think, be granted and should not reflect in any way to the discredit of France. If by any chance it is refused … If it is refused, I shall have to use other means, and I shall resign as Ambassador. If this happens, I strongly advise that no other appointment is made
until the situation with Roxelana is resolved. A chargé d’affaires should be sufficient.’

‘Chesnau will be here,’ said the Baron thoughtfully. ‘Since I shall be there to present you … may I know the form your petition will take?’

The arched blue gaze, unwavering, showed no desire to avoid his. ‘I wish an order to remove two persons from the Seraglio. One is a English girl who has just arrived there in error. The other is one of the Children of Tribute.’

None of his amazement revealed on his face, M. d’Aramon put, with diffidence, his last question. ‘I am sorry. But I am sure there will be no difficulty, provided you are willing to be … generous. They are … family friends?’

Lymond rose. ‘The girl’s mother is an old and dear friend of my family.’

‘And the child?’

Outside, a French voice, speaking bad Turkish, was raised in dispute: other, authoritative voices joined in and there was a trampling of feet. Lymond, moving swiftly, said, ‘He is a member of my own family … Forgive me a moment. When I return, perhaps we should go ashore.…’

For a moment the Baron de Luetz sat looking at his successor’s back as Crawford moved towards the scene of the trouble. The quarrelling stopped. Beside him the steward, moving soft-footed round the table, poured M. d’Aramon a last cup of wine and removed the now empty flask. But instead of going away he hesitated and M. d’Aramon, looking up, saw that the man, a Swiss, he thought, with a heavy frame and a pink, overfleshed face, was attempting to speak. ‘Well?’ he said.

Onophrion Zitwitz bowed, the flask clasped to his breast. ‘I overheard.… If you will forgive me, my lord. You should know. His Excellency will not speak of it, but the child in the Seraglio is his son.’

If Lymond found M. d’Aramon’s manner to him at all different when, returning, he disembarked and riding at the Baron’s side, their joint retainers behind him, climbed the steep hill to the French Ambassador’s house at the top, his own did not change from the formal.

From the big white house, with its herb and flower garden, its pebbled walks and its fountains, one could look through the vineyards of Pera and down to where the busy town of Galata descended the hill to the water. Across the creek, on the other side of the Golden Horn, lay Constantinople.

In the six days which must pass before their audience, both the retiring Ambassador and his successor spent some time among the
papers in M. d’Aramon’s study, arranging the affairs of the French King and his humbler subjects in Turkey. As he learned to know him better, M. d’Aramon began to recognize the restlessness to which Crawford was sometimes subject; when after a morning of rapid and capable case-work he would walk up and down the low balcony, staring across at the Abode of Felicity, the famous skyline which had taken the place of the New Jerusalem, the holy city, come down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, whose priests had cried on its completion: O Lord, guide it on the good path for infinite ages …

Then M. d’Aramon would suggest they assume the loose robes they wore, Turkish-fashion, over their Western dress in the street, and with Crawford at his side, and the Janissaries following, would walk down through one of the twelve gates of the century-old walls of Galata to the Tower of Christ, first built by Anastasius, or down through the narrow streets of the merchants to the ruins of the Genoese fort from which, a hundred years before, the chain had stretched over the Golden Horn to Seraglio Point.

It was a walk the Baron de Luetz himself never failed to find exhilarating. Once, walls had been built to divide the town into quarters for the true Peratins, the Greeks and the Turks. Long ago these divisions had risen like multilingual yeast and most bountifully overflowed: Franks, Jews, Moslems, Ragusans, Florentines and Sciots thronged and spilled up and down the ill-cobbled streets: sailors, joiners, caulkers; Armenian merchants in long Greek dress and blue, red and white turbans, calling the charms of their cloths and their carpets; Ragusans dressed like Venetian merchants; yellow-turbaned Jews interpreting, smooth-tongued, or hurrying between shop or broker or printing-press; Janissaries; gardeners from the vineyards and occasionally, as nowhere else in the realms of the Sultan, a drunk man, ejected from one of the town’s two hundred taverns.

For this was a Christian town as well as a Moslem one, with Christian vices and virtues. As well as mosques there were churches, convents and synagogues: mingling with the voice of the muezzin, proclaiming five times a day the omnipotence and unity of God, was the two-toned chime of iron on iron, the primitive call permitted by Islam to all the Greek churches, in the absence of the infidel bell.

Indeed, to a stranger, the overwhelming force of its noise was the first impression he received of Galata. The vibration of its foundry and craft-shops; the chanting, the calling and hammering from the crowded wharves where the ranked ships up to five hundred tons could berth tied up to the houses, and during winter a thousand vessels could lie in the whole half-mile width of the Horn.

The rumbling of carts and the clatter of mules struggling up and down the steep slopes, laden with cargo, pressing aside the little asses bearing women to church or baths or burial-ground: Armenians
sitting sidesaddle in their high linen headdresses, speaking Slav or broken Italian; Peratine French and resident women of other races in taffeta, satin and lace, buttoned with gold and silver, their caps wound about with jewelled silks, their arms heavy with bracelets, as their escorts rode ahead, pressing aside the loud-mouthed, cheerful throng.

Snatches of laughter, and a song from a wine-booth. A shrieking block in one alley as a long chain of Armenian porters, arms interlaced, brought up from the harbour a great two-ton fat-bellied keg on a pole. The clangour, night and day, outside the gates from the new arsenal with its hundred arches or vaults for the building and dry-docking of galleys.

D’Aramon took the new Ambassador everywhere: even to the foundry and barracks at Topkhane, on the Bosphorus shore, where the viziers and Imams sat on sofas crying
Allah! Allah!
as the stokers threw wood on the furnaces; and the founders, naked but for slippers and caps and the thick protective sleeves on their arms, mixed gold and silver for the True Faith with the bubbling brass in the foundry; and sheep were sacrificed, screaming, in the red glare of the furnace as its mouth was forced open with long iron hooks, and the white metal flowed to the moulds.

That day, they were too late for dinner, and M. d’Aramon took his colleague instead to a Greek tavern serving a good Ancona wine and spiced white bread and honey and Tomourra caviare, cut whole and salted. ‘As you know, I dare say … in Stamboul you will find cook-shops, but no taverns or inns as one would expect in a Christian country.’ M. d’Aramon was feeling stimulated and modestly pleased with himself. It was some time since he had travelled about Galata on foot. He was a little footsore, perhaps—the streets were shocking—but otherwise for his age quite remarkably fresh.

‘
Nulla apud Turcas esse diversoria
 … Yes, I know,’ said Crawford mildly. They were the first words he had spoken for some time. He had not, M. d’Aramon noted, indulged overmuch in the caviare, although he had taken a little more wine than was his usual remarkably spare habit. A trembling flicker of sapphire blue flame from the ring on the other man’s hand, lying still by his goblet, drew the Baron’s attention, just as Crawford added, in the same breath, ‘I wonder … are there horses one might hire to the Embassy?’

‘My dear sir!’ Instant solicitude; but beneath it, an undeniably selfish shadow of pleasure. Exhausted. And he could give him … what? Twenty years? But it was, of course, a very steep climb back to the hilltop at Pera.

M. d’Aramon obtained the horses, and with his Janissaries walking behind, returned home with the new Ambassador who smiled, but did not again speak until, dismounting in the Embassy courtyard, they walked indoors together. There he turned, and holding out his
hand to M. d’Aramon said, ‘Will you forgive me? As Abraham entertained the angels with hearth-cakes, you have entertained me, and I am deeply indebted. It is to my shame that I have not your energy.’

His voice was steady and the hand he offered was cool. But from the roots of his damp yellow hair, all Crawford’s skin, d’Aramon saw with surprise, was sparkling with sweat.

He said something, he remembered, and stood watching as the new Ambassador, withdrawing his hand, smiled and turned into his own private chamber. Later, d’Aramon was thinking about it again, in his own study, when the fat Swiss steward scratched on the door and then entered.

He brought the explanation for this curious behaviour, quite simply, with his apologies.

‘M. le Comte has recently had an infection of the shoulder, Your Excellency, which troubles him if he does not have a sufficiency of rest. He would not himself venture to upset your programme, but if you would be so kind as to ensure that he has an opportunity to dine here at the Embassy each day, followed by an hour, no more, in which to repose …’

‘But of course,’ said M. d’Aramon, roused to a lively anxiety. ‘I did not know. He did not, of course, mention it. I trust no harm … I hope,’ said M. d’Aramon hurriedly, as another thought struck him, ‘that Tuesday’s ceremony will not be too much for him?’

‘Thank you, sir. It is kind of you, sir. You may rest perfectly assured,’ said Master Zitwitz with gentle and absolute confidence, ‘that His Excellency will attend Tuesday’s ceremony with no difficulty whatsoever.’

About half-way between Aleppo and Chios, it came to Jerott Blyth, like Achillini discerning the bile duct, that he hated ichneumons.

Afterwards, with the mountains, the steppes, the gorges behind him; having lived through the sleepless days in the stifling heat of the tents and passed the labouring nights in the saddle of his small Turkish horse, which could walk or gallop but was unable to trot, or on the jolting back of one of the two hundred camels in their long caravan, Jerott was prepared to admit that for many reasons that long journey, six weeks in all, between Aleppo and Constantinople was one of the worst in his life.