Pawn in Frankincense (78 page)

Pillars still remained, of coloured marble, upholding the galleries beneath which were the cages and chambers and storehouses; and at the other end, near St Sophia, some tiered buildings and remains of wide shallow steps. In the centre, in a straggling line, there remained also what was left of the treasures brought to Byzantium from Greece and Asia Minor, and all over the civilized world. The obelisk from Karnak, set up by Theodosius on its plinth of deep bas-relief, was now nearly three thousand years old; its hieroglyphics still sharp and clear. Near it, the Column of Constantine still showed the marks where its plates of gilt bronze had been pinned, and between them, twenty feet high, were the three coiled bronze snakes from the Temple of Delphi, whose heads had once held the great golden tripod and vase before the shrine two thousand years earlier. A century before, on another site, water, wine and milk had flowed from the three serpent heads which now gaped at the winter skies, broken and dry. Now Suleiman used the waste ground between for sports and for festivals, and the Janissaries practised their archery and rode fast, dangerous games of Djirit among its broken pillars and fragmented marble, where flocks of goats rested in summer, and dogs roamed, and vendors of sherbet and sweetmeats set up their stalls in the shade of the galleries.

Today it was cold; and there were braziers among the pale stones, where you could take your pieces of meat straight from the butcher, and have them skewered and roasted: the smell of hot mutton, pushed by the sea winds, floated among the drift of idlers who were watching a company of seraglio Ajémoghláns on horseback taking part in a wild and dangerous game of Djirit, their four-foot white wands stabbing, vicious as spears. The story-teller had been placed in state near one of the braziers, and the crowd increased; for he was
now well known for his marvellous tales in the ancient tradition as well as for new ones of his own, which, like the silk-moth, he spun strand by strand without effort, filled with delicate wonders.

A man, then, of poetic imagination. But could one reconcile that, thought Jerott Blyth, on the edge of the crowd, with a man who could kill as Lymond had killed in Algiers; who could plan and act without mercy? He shrugged, inside his long fur-lined coat, and sent his Janissary over to buy a skewer of meat.

Ishiq came up, bowl in hand, a few seconds later. Jerott dropped in his coins. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that the girl has not come back from Topkapi, and that according to the Seraglio she has been invited to stay longer to put the spinet fully in order. We have had no direct message from Marthe herself.’ He grinned at Ishiq; a happy slave, who had no doubts about his master, and the boy, calling Allah to bless him, also grinned and ran off. In the background, Lymond’s voice rose and fell in its beautiful Turkish: behind hood and beard and blindfolding bandage, Jerott could make nothing at all of his face. Then the Janissary came back, and Jerott stayed, chewing, till the skewer was empty and the begging-bowl came round for the second time.

In the bottom of the bowl was a screw of paper, half buried by small silver coins. This time Jerott plaintively refused a second donation but, as the bowl was thrust at him a second time and a third, he fished reluctantly in his purse at length, and put in an asper.

The paper came up, neatly unseen in the palm of his hand. It held only one word in English:
Proceed
.

On the other side of the city a Geomaler with a lyre wandered sleepily into Constantine’s Palace and serenaded the lions, until the assistant keeper turned him rudely out. He left behind him a menagerie of restless animals and a small twist of paper on the broken mosaic floor, which the under keeper picked up and kept. Untwisted, it also held the same word in English:
Proceed
.

Within the damp, inhospitable walls of Gaultier’s house the owner passed his days nursing his suppurating arm and his useless well both, in a fury of impatience, awaiting his niece’s return. Pierre Gilles, sitting philosophically wrapped in a blanket and endlessly writing up his blurred Latin inventories, had long ago given up reasoned argument; and was all the more glad to see Jerott Blyth’s face when at last he called on them, his Janissary as always outside.

To Jerott’s story, Gilles responded with a frowning concern: he stared back at the speaker, thinking, while Gaultier exploded into a frenzy of angry demands. The girl had gone to Topkapi; had carried out their part of the bargain. Now it was for Jerott to carry out his. Bring back the boat, so that they could obtain what was theirs. Did he realize how long it would take to empty that chamber and ferry its contents back into the house? If something had gone
wrong: if the girl was in trouble: at any moment the Bostanji Bashi’s henchmen might come …

Gilles cut into it. ‘How long has she been in the Seraglio?’

‘Four days,’ said Jerott.

Pierre Gilles looked at him. ‘Four days without sleep will not improve your chances of aiding her,’ he said dryly. ‘If she requires aid. Does your Ambassadorial friend see something sinister in this delay?’

Jerott said, ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t allowed it to affect his plans.’

‘But you say there is no love lost between them, so he may merely be unmoved by her fate. Yet if he believed her to be detained because of the message she carried, he would surely have altered his designs? If, on the other hand, it was because they have guessed our discovery, we here should surely have been molested by now. There is a strong possibility, it seems to me,’ said Maître Gilles, looking down at the white face of his former secretary, ‘that the young woman has merely been detained, as they claim, in order to restore the clock-spinet?’

‘It is possible,’ said Jerott. He added, curtly, ‘It was my fault. Mr Crawford had no idea until I told him that I had sent Marthe with the message.… We can do nothing but wait. I can’t go near Lymond now in case I endanger him.’

‘You are watched. Of course,’ said Gilles. ‘So you remain at the Embassy throughout all, fretting. You know, I take it, the expression, “
Alter ius non sit, quisuus esse potest?”
What, for example, if the girl and the two children are rescued, leaving Marthe to suffer in the Seraglio in their place? Or do you agree this would be just punishment for her misdemeanours?’

‘I know the expression,’ said Jerott. ‘At the moment I am another’s, and not my own. What I think doesn’t matter.’

‘I see,’ said Pierre Gilles, watching him. He said, after a moment, ‘I believe I should like to meet your friend Mr Crawford.’

‘The world is full,’ said Jerott wearily, ‘of people who might have wanted to meet Francis Crawford, and who are going to be disappointed. So, among other things, Marthe has to be expendable.’

‘And the treasure?’ said the usurer Gaultier. ‘Is that expendable too?’

The eyes of Gilles the scholar remained on Jerott’s dark face. ‘Yes. Of course it is,’ he said. ‘We also are being required to wait, and to fret. He has forced you to think, has he, this friend of yours?’

Herpestes had jumped on his lap. Jerott stroked him slowly, without looking up. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘You and he between you.’

It seemed like virtue rewarded when, a day later, a page from the Seraglio appeared at the Embassy in the afternoon requiring M. Chesnau to send an official to escort home the Khátún adjusting the
spinet, who had suffered a slight breakdown in health. There was no question as to which official should go. Jerott was out of his room, his lined cloak over his arm, as soon as Chesnau told him the news, and was halted only by Onophrion’s great bulk on the threshold, his voice deferential, but his face lined with concern. ‘If Mr Blyth would allow me to accompany him? The young lady may well need attention …?’

He had thrown together, even in that short space of time, a neat emergency roll including aquavitae and a thick robe, hood and rug. Jerott, his mind busied with confused thought and emotions, was thankful indeed to have conducted for him the practical side of the journey. None was better than Onophrion at obtaining a boatman quickly, or horses at the far side, for themselves and the Janissary, with mules for the two servants bearing his burdens. They left in a matter of moments, and were at the Imperial Gate, the Bab-i-Humayun, inside the hour.

Onophrion had been before, with Lymond. Jerott, whose first visit it was, had an impression of great spaces filled with men and horses and the tall white caps and blue robes of the Janissaries, walking in groups or marching in small, brisk detachments. Chiausi took them through the first court to the Ortokapi Gate and between the feathered files of the Kapici: in the Divan Court they were greeted by the Bostanji Bashi, who led Jerott alone to the Gate of Felicity.

They had an affable, if formal, conversation on the way, their voices sounding loud in the strange Seraglio silence. In the gateway, as had happened with the Ambassador, the Bostanji Bashi halted, and directing the way to the retiring-rooms, asked Jerott to wait. He hoped they were looking after Onophrion. Above all, he hoped they would be speedy. For what he knew and they did not was that, before darkness fell, Philippa and both children should be out of the city.

Only then did it occur to him, stupidly, that Marthe knew that fact, for of course he had told her the details himself, to pass on to Philippa. Which was strongest in that solitary soul: hatred or avarice? Greed, he had assumed, but perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he was here because she had betrayed them.

The carpet-dealer called late that afternoon at the house of Názik, the nightingale-merchant, and tramped in without knocking to pick up the carpet he had bought earlier in the day.

Názik was busy and short-tempered, and the interruption was unwelcome. At the same time the dealer, who was new to him and most likely to his job, had offered him four times what he had paid for a Persian prayer-rug, already a little threadbare, under the impression that it was a good deal more important than Názik knew it to be.

It was a bargain not to be missed. On the other hand, the cage-maker at long last had sent round his man with the two cages Názik had long coveted, and he had just unwrapped the first to find that the door was weak in its hinges. It was in other respects so splendid: so ideal, one would say, for Khaireddin, for example, that Názik could have wept. He caressed the ebony base, inset with ivory and mother of pearl and small simply cut jewels, and hung with tassels of silver and scarlet, all the time he was shouting at the cage-maker’s man, who insisted, wailing, that all cage-doors behaved so.

It was no use. Clearly the cage was unsafe. He had just ordered the man to cover up the warped thing and take it out of his sight when he had to go and deal with the carpet. When he came back, soothed by the sight and feel of shivering aspers, it was to find the second cage standing in all its glory, even more fine than the first. They haggled for a long time over the price, and then at the last moment Názik balked at handing over the money, and told the man that he would call at the cage-maker’s and pay it. They were in the middle of a second argument over whether or not the cage could be left, if unpaid for, when Názik’s assistant ran in to say that the boy Khaireddin had gone. And that, as Názik well knew, meant death. Then Názik remembered the carpet-dealer.

They followed the tracks of the cart, running, through the uneven streets, shouting questions as they went to passers-by who stared and called back. The dealer had talked of leaving for Adrianople, and in fact had started towards the Adrianople gate, before doubling back and through a network of streets which led his pursuers, slowly and surely, towards the Golden Horn and its shipping.

They found the cart, in the end, with all its piled carpets standing alone on the landing-stage with its mule sniffing at fish-heads: the swarm of small boys who had just reached it and were pulling off the top heavy roll jumped down and scattered at Názik’s breathless approach. It was his carpet they had partly dismantled, and inside was Khaireddin’s small cap; but no other sign of the boy or the dealer at all.

They searched the waterside till darkness, with the help of those silent men who, day in and day out, had watched every move by the child. Finally, whimpering, Názik went back to his nightingales and began to pack, hurriedly. Míkál, who had come over to buy a few hours of Khaireddin’s time, stayed to comfort him; and also to make quite sure that it occurred to no one at all to follow the cage-maker’s mule, plodding out of the city gate and along the road to the west with a warped silver cage wrapped in cotton and strapped to its pannier.

In Topkapi, Philippa also was following instructions. That they had come in the first place through Marthe had been an astonishment from which she had not yet recovered. But then, as she wisely
concluded, Marthe’s relations with Lymond might well have undergone quite a change in all the months since last she had seen them together. Marthe’s feelings towards herself were still clearly cool. Philippa had watched her leave the selamlik with something very like panic, but she was used to overcoming that particular impulse. It did not cross her mind that Marthe had not immediately left the Seraglio for good.