Pawn in Frankincense (74 page)

Then she was summoned to the rooms of the Sultan.

It happened on a Thursday, the day Hepsabah usually came, and worried her at first as she was expecting a message from Lymond. She stared at Kiaya Khátún, her mind busy, and only slowly realized what Kiaya Khátún had in fact said. The rooms of the Sultan.

But the Sultan was now in Aleppo. She opened her mouth, but Kiaya Khátún forestalled her, the dark Greek face placid. ‘You ask yourself, why the Sultan’s apartments? I answer that it is a State
ceremony. You are fortunate in being chosen to share it. I have told the Mistress of the Baths and the Mistress of the Wardrobe to prepare you. When they have done we shall see, I trust, the harvest of these our long labours to lead you to ripeness and beauty. When you are ready, they will lead you to the Golden Road and a eunuch will come for you.’

In the baths, although they giggled and shrieked and conjectured, the other girls had no idea what was going to happen. To some of their suggestions she closed her ears, although she made jokes, as best she could, while they sluiced and scrubbed and anointed her; a different scent for each foot of her body. She knew them all now. Only a few were spiteful. Most were cheerful before what they felt somehow must be her good fortune, and only a little envious of the stiff marten trimmed robe they slipped over her head, and the three thousand crowns’ worth of pearls bound in her thick, shining hair. Her pattens were inlaid with mother of pearl and with silver, and her little cap was edged with seed pearls and topped with a worked plaque in silver. She was not given a veil. Then they took her to the Golden Road.

She waited there perhaps ten minutes, her negress smiling behind her. It was narrow and carpeted, and dark in spite of the small silver lamps on the arcaded walls and the most beautiful faience in the world: tomato red, scarlet and coral, thick-laid on a flawless white ground.… Dear Kate, thought Philippa as the smell of mutton reached her, sickening, from the apartments above, I am robed and waiting to be taken to the Sultan’s apartment. I wish I had paid either more attention or less to my instructors. I wish I knew what was happening. I wish I were at home.

A voice in her brain, more than erratic in its grasp of adult phraseology said,
I need to waiting for Fippy
. An invisible pen in her mind, hovering over her invisible diary, reread the last entry and, stoutly, scored through the ultimate sentence. She had asked Lymond for money, through Hepsabah. So soon as she had it, she could at least ensure that, outwith Gabriel’s eye, Kuzúm would be fairly well treated. What might happen to Kuzúm under Gabriel’s direction was a different matter. But while she could influence his fate, her place was here, and not at Flaw Valleys.…

She followed the eunuch, when he came, along the Golden Road, beside the big courtyard and between the suites of the khátúns and the harem mosque and past another courtyard to the big door which gave on to the selamlik terrace, with its fountains and pool. There the eunuch turned left, and almost immediately halted outside a bronze door, surrounded by marbles.

Inside, Philippa knew, was one of the smaller reception rooms. Outside, dressed in bright coral satin, were two of the royal tressed pages, their painted eyes oval as eggs. The eunuch bowed, and one
of the pages, with an answering salute, consulted briefly within and then returned and held open the door. The eunuch stepped back and Philippa, trailing amber brocale and well-massaged hauteur, drifted inside.

On one side, against marble and eyeleted wainscotting, stood the Kislar Agha, the head of the harem. On the other, broad as Zeus in plumed turban and flowering velvet, sat Graham Reid Malett. Jubrael Pasha. Gabriel, himself. The door closed behind her.

Lying back, his elbows in cloth-of-gold cushions, Gabriel inspected her. The face wearing that cursory smile hadn’t changed in all the months since last she had seen him in the cathedral in Edinburgh, hardly able, even yet, to understand that all his plans had fallen in ruins; flinging that last, angry challenge at Lymond. The ruddy, fine-shaven skin was the same, and the distinguished brow, and the light blue eyes, large and level and free of all guile. Gabriel said, ‘My compliments, Kislar Agha. The improvement is considerable. Now kindly disrobe her.’

Like puppets in a rather poor comedy, the eunuch and the Kislar Agha bowed and advanced. Philippa’s heart gave a single loud report and began pattering like a mouse on a tow-line. She said acidly, ‘The Sultan won’t like it.’

Gabriel looked at her, finding the interruption mildly distasteful. He said, addressing her for the first time, ‘The Sultan, through his wife Khourrém Sultán, has made me a free gift of one of his slaves. My choice has fallen on you.’

‘To remind you of home?’ inquired Philippa, Gabriel looked over her head. ‘Take note. Tonight the boy wül have six lashes at bedtime.’ The blue gaze, smiling, slid back to Kate’s daughter again. ‘You object to being exposed?’

Philippa’s brown eyes were full of surprise. ‘Only when my buttons are stiff. My goodness, who’s going to care when it happens nearly every day of the week and three times on Saturdays?’

For a moment the blue eyes held hers. Then Gabriel turned and spoke to the Chief Black Eunuch. Then he addressed Philippa softly. ‘The Kislar Agha tells me you are a virgin.’

‘Ask the Kislar Agha how he knows,’ said Philippa. ‘Or perhaps you have attended one of our lecture courses?’ She began philosophically, stilling the shake in her fingers, to unfasten the clasps of her outer robe. ‘It’s better with music,’ she said.

‘I think you are being impertinent,’ said Gabriel. ‘As it is, the child Kuzucuyum will receive tomorrow a beating of six strokes. On your conduct and compliance will depend all his future wellbeing. When I call for you, you will come. Whatever I demand of you, you will perform. Very soon, Mr Francis Crawford of Lymond will be dead and the poor boy wül have none to protect him but you … the poor boys, I should have said.’

He smiled, that forgiving, magnificent smile. The eunuchs, at a sign, had stepped back without touching Philippa, and, raising her eyebrows, she proceeded to fasten her over-robe once again, her expression stoic, her knees, unseen, like peeled wicks with relief. Gabriel said, ‘You know, I take it, that there are two claimants to the proud name of Crawford?’

‘The other is Tulip?’ Philippa ventured.

‘The other is a boy now in Constantinople, found and identified by the energetic Mr Blyth. He also answers to the name of Khaireddin, but whether it is Mr Crawford’s son or another substituted for him in earlier days, no one unhappily can now say. But there is no doubt that one of the two boys is Mr Crawford’s unfortunate by-blow; and one of them, as it happens, is mine.’

Philippa’s mouth dropped very slightly open. She shut it. ‘How awkward for you,’ she said thinly. ‘What does the other one look like?’

‘Let me think,’ said Gabriel. He pursed his lips. ‘Handsome; fair-haired; blue-eyed. No clue there, is there? Attractive. Bright for his age, one suspects, except that we don’t know his age, do we? One must be older than the other by several months, though not more than a year; but one has had a spoiled upbringing and the other a deprived one, so how does one measure growth? Luckily, I have no strongly patriarchal emotions. I do not intend Mr Crawford to have either child. For myself I do not care if I keep one or both or if neither survives. I shall do whatever gives me the greatest personal satisfaction.… It pleases you, I hope, to learn that you have been lavishing your feminine instincts perhaps on that dear child born to Joleta and myself?’

‘On the other hand,’ said Philippa, ‘if I were impertinent again, your son might receive six other lashes?’

‘On the other hand,’ said Gabriel gently, ‘it may not be my son, but the son of your mother’s friend Lymond. You cannot depend on it. You will never be able to depend on it.’

Philippa drew a long breath. It was the longest, most adult duel she had ever faced in the whole of her short life. She did not know what to believe or what not to believe: she only knew that strategy had worked, a bit, in her favour. She hadn’t been stripped. She had given nothing away. She had shown nothing, she thought, of the pain and horror he anticipated from her. She had not afforded him, in fact, the entertainment he had expected.… She must not become a challenge. But she might force him to tire of her. She said, ‘Do I become your slave immediately, Sir Graham, or wait until supper?’

Gabriel rose. ‘You will stay in the harem long enough, I hope, to mourn Mr Crawford. After that, I have the permission of the Sultana to take you then to my palace, together with whichever child I select. The other will remain in the harem as surety for your most
tractable conduct. I shall make it my personal business,’ said Graham Reid Malett, ‘to keep you aware of the course of events. You may return to your rooms for the present.’

Philippa bowed. The Kislar Agha bowed. The eunuch who had brought her, moving past, opened and stood by the door. ‘Ah,’ said Gabriel.

Philippa straightened. ‘That reminds me,’ said the Vizier, stroking his nose. ‘You may take a message on your return to Kiaya Khátún for me. Inform her that Hepsibah the Jewess will not be coming today. She has been found in the At Meydan, dead and about to be plundered of a large sum of money. Perhaps the poor woman’s savings. She had no relatives and since the gold was given to me, I have presented it to the two charming children you see guarding the door. They will use it, I fear, only to slip deeper into delightful and improper vices; but what can one do? They are kind boys, as your Kuzúm will discover one day.… Goodbye, my dear Philippa.’

Dear Philippa bowed and got out. She was sick into a fountain on the way back, and again in the Golden Road. She thought viciously, through an evening of violent shivers, that at least her visit had cost them a new strip of carpet.

Very soon after that, on a bright, mild winter’s morning when the birds, deceived, were singing in the plane trees and there was a little green growth in the Embassy garden, Jerott Blyth left, with his bodyguard, to pay an unexpected call on the house of Gaultier, and specifically on his niece, Mlle Marthe. Leaving the Janissary to await him, discreetly, on the dusty waste ground outside, Jerott climbed the single step and banged on the door.

He had not been back to the house since the day he helped Gilles and the rest to move in. That he was here at all was unknown to Lymond. Sooner or later, Jerott well understood, the matter of Marthe was going to be forced on Lymond’s attention, perhaps even by Marthe herself. Meantime, Jerott Blyth was the last person to anticipate it.

An old negress opened the door. She was not well versed in Turkish, or indeed in any other language Jerott tried her with: he reached the conclusion, correctly, that she was exceedingly slow in her wits; and for this virtue indeed had been chosen. But when, alarmingly, the dark young man on her threshold showed no signs at all of retreat and, on the contrary, was inching his way steadily into the house, the negress gave up and, bidding him wait, went off into the back of the house.

He didn’t wait. He had penetrated the first room: as bare as the day they had taken possession, when the door opened and Marthe hurried in. Her long hair, hastily pinned, had allowed some strands to escape and lie in coils against her slim neck, which was dirty. Her gown was not very clean either, but she had pinned a fresh apron on top in his honour.

She had assumed at the same time no alien courtesy. ‘I have a client,’ said Marthe in that cool, familiar voice which brushed through the nerves. ‘I am afraid you must be brief.’

‘My dear lady,’ said Jerott. ‘I shouldn’t dream of detaining you. I have all the time in the world. I shall wait until you have finished.’

He looked round for somewhere to sit, but Marthe, without moving, said in the same contemptuous voice, ‘I am sorry. We are discussing with him the repair of a harpsichord. It will take a very long time; and then I have another engagement.’

‘You
are
busy, aren’t you?’ said Jerott cheerfully. ‘Uncle too? What a pity. Then I shall just have a talk with Maître Gilles.’

‘I am sorry——’ Marthe began; but Jerott, his black eyebrows lifted, interrupted her. ‘He’s busy dissecting the harpsichord?’

‘He is out,’ said Marthe curtly.

Jerott’s eyes were on the shadows behind her. He looked back at Marthe, grinning. ‘Without Herpestes?’ he said.

It was bluff, but it worked. The girl who was Lymond’s sister turned and, closing the door, returned and sat down, her back straight, on the big tapestried chest which was nearly all the room contained. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘A service,’ said Jerott.

‘Lymond has sent you?’ She spoke the name with scorn. Lymond’s Christian name she had never been heard to employ. ‘He doesn’t know I am here.’

‘Ah. You have found him, then,’ said Marthe. ‘I imagined you would. He prefers limelight to obscurity, like the Prophet whose wives could find a lost needle by the light of his body. But how rash of you to inform me! Should I not rush to the Seraglio with the news?’

‘You might,’ said Jerott. ‘Except that, unlike your brother, I have a feeling that you prefer obscurity to limelight just at present. And also I remember what you did at Mehedia.’

Marthe smiled. ‘Donna Maria Mascarenhas? Don’t rely on that, Mr Blyth. My uncle and I had to get to Aleppo. I am afraid I have no more services to perform for you or your friends.’

Standing quietly at the far side of the room, Jerott watched her, his splendid aquiline face grim. ‘You are a human being,’ he said. ‘You know now what Graham Reid Malett is. Neither he nor Francis will rest until one or the other is killed: that is their own affair and not yours. But before that can happen, the children have to be saved. One of them is already half destroyed and the other in the harem has begun to suffer as well. Gabriel is now in complete power, and has arranged to make the Somerville girl his own.…’

For a moment Marthe was quiet. But when she spoke, there was still contempt in her voice. ‘What do you suggest?’ she said. ‘That I give myself up in their place?’