Pawn in Frankincense (82 page)

The two mutes who had locked her in brought Philippa breakfast next morning, and the wherewithal to make a rough toilet. She had just finished when the cell door opened and was shut and locked again behind Marthe.

Marthe, it was clear, was as bewildered as Philippa, although in a moment she had masked it; and, surveying the tray of half-eaten food, observed, ‘I don’t blame you; although, I advise you, it is easier to be bold if your stomach is full. You didn’t escape?’

‘I did. We were brought back.’ She explained, and listened in turn, flushing, to Marthe’s story. ‘They kept you because you’d carried a message for me. I’m sorry. And it all went for nothing because Míkál told Gabriel everything.’

‘Míkál,’ said Marthe, ‘who went with you to find the child at Thessalonika?’ Onophrion had told her all they had learned on that journey, when he and Lymond had sailed on the same route with Míkál on board. She said, ‘Weren’t there accidents?’

‘Where? I don’t know,’ said Philippa.

‘On board ship with dear Mr Crawford.… It doesn’t matter,’ said Marthe. ‘It isn’t your fault. You had an outburst of philanthropy and I made an error of judgement, and it has landed us both in precisely the same spot.’

Untouched and slender, she seemed to Philippa’s eyes quite unchanged: a little thinner perhaps; a little quieter perhaps, but that was all. It did not occur to Philippa to wonder how much she herself had grown in the last year or more; or how she had altered. She had seen herself in Lymond’s eyes as the schoolgirl she had always been: an additional burden to be reassured. She did not see in Marthe’s quieter mood a sober assessment of what the long imprisonment must have meant, and of the kind of spirit which had not only endured it but built on it. Philippa said, her hands hard one on top of the other, ‘There was another child, too. I don’t know if they caught him. Gabriel says one of them is his. I wonder what they’ll do to the children?’

‘Nothing, probably,’ said Marthe. ‘Mr Crawford, I suppose, stands to pay the full penalty for taking you and the children away against the Sultan’s commands, and we shall be punished for helping him.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Philippa. ‘They talked of sedition. They’ve even accused him of theft. You see, Gabriel is going to deal with him in his own way, and he must have full justification.’ She said, hesitating, ‘You said once that you were forced into bringing that message. If you could prove that …?’

‘I don’t think,’ said Marthe calmly, ‘that it would do me much good.’

‘You’re beautiful,’ said Philippa gently. ‘He won’t kill you.’

The glint of a cold surprise, so familiar from the early days on the
Dauphiné
, returned to Marthe’s level blue gaze. ‘You think I would scuttle into any man’s harem? Would you?’

‘Yes. For Kuzúm,’ said Philippa. She hesitated, guessing. ‘People help one another. Wouldn’t … Mr Blyth perhaps do the equivalent for you?’

Marthe laughed, without amusement, deep in her long throat. ‘Mr Blyth put me here. Mr Crawford and I owe each other nothing. My uncle I hate and you I do not know. No one, as far as I see, has endeavoured to engineer
my
escape.’

‘I think … that was only because they didn’t know you were a prisoner,’ said Philippa. She was rather pale. She said, in a small voice, ‘
I
would do it for you.’

The colour left Marthe’s face too, in patches; then flooded in, deep rose over her brow and cheeks and slim neck. She stood up. ‘Because I look like my brother?’ she said.

Philippa’s dark brows had met in a straight line; her brown eyes opaque with a new self-control fighting with a faint and horrified understanding. After a while she said simply, ‘No. Because I know what it is to need help.’

For a moment longer Marthe studied her; and Philippa rather bleakly wondered what amused rejoinder, what cutting remark she had called on herself. But Marthe in the end said merely, ‘Then … when I need help, I shall have to call on you, shan’t I?’ in a voice whose coolness and impatience did not ring entirely true. There was a silence, and then Philippa said awkwardly, ‘I didn’t know.… Is Mr Crawford your brother?’

The blue eyes this time were both cool and amused. ‘If he knew, he might prefer you to put it differently,’ said Marthe. ‘I am his bastard sister. We have the same failings. Didn’t you guess?’

The tribunal before which they had all been arraigned was held without delay in the Divan Court the following morning. To Jerott, the former Knight of St John, who knew better perhaps than any of them the exquisite range of Saracen torture, the news was a relief. Lymond, to whom he said as much, did not reply, but Archie was blunt. ‘He won’t have us marked before all the pashas. It’s afterwards, when we’ve been sentenced, that he’ll have a free hand.’

Today, under Archie’s ministrations, Lymond seemed completely himself; and although the marks of his beating were still plain on his face, the fresh robes they were given, according to custom, had covered the rest. Between waking and setting out for the court he had
said very little: what was there indeed, thought Jerott, to say? An apology perhaps to Archie, for having trusted where he should never have trusted. But that was hindsight. Who could have suspected Míkál?

As for Jerott himself, he had brought his troubles on his own head. No one had asked him to compel Marthe to come, and no one had asked him to follow her. He waited, chatting with Archie, until they heard the tramp of the Janissaries outside, and Lymond said, ‘Jerott …’ and then stopped, his eyes brilliant; his face very white. He said, ‘Surely they will let me speak to you both, before the end?’

‘What is it?’ said Jerott; and took Lymond’s wrist. ‘There is time. Tell us now.’

‘I can’t,’ said Francis Crawford, an odd note of desperation in his voice. ‘Archie, will this bloody stuff last out the morning, or shall I have to take more in the …?’

Archie’s voice was steady as ever; comfortable as when he held converse with one of his lions. ‘It should last. But you’ve more in your kerchief and in your purse, and I’ve supplies for several days after that.’

It was then that you remembered, thought Jerott Blyth suddenly, that Archie after all was a man in his fifties. And that Lymond was just twenty-six.

Then the door opened and Lymond, the balance back in his voice, said lightly, ‘All right, gentlemen. Havoc and mount!’

Once before, as Ambassador, he had stood before the throne in the Divan Court, and Gabriel in white and gold had greeted him, his officials around him.

Now Gabriel was robed in purple and crimson, his turban girdled with rubies, and a brazier with great silver feet stood on the deep carpet beside him, where the robed figures ranged in their furred winter robes, their turbans and hats, round, conical, oblong, in every colour and shape describing as clearly as badges the ranks in law and security, holy teaching, administration and learning foregathered there. Gabriel sat, and they settled, each on his low stool, the clerks in a corner writing already, paper on knee.

It left Jerott feeling remarkably exposed, standing with Archie beside him near the door, a row of blue-robed Janissaries silent behind them. He wondered how Lymond felt, waiting alone before Gabriel, who, talking to his interpreter, had not even glanced at him. His back told Jerott nothing.

There was no sign of the children. None either of Philippa and Marthe, or of Onophrion. His gaze wandering round, Jerott caught sight suddenly of Míkál, his long hair freshly combed and a necklace of white salted roses over his purple silk tunic. Instead of bells, his
wrists were banded with new bracelets of gold, and he had an anklet of gold on one slender arched foot. Rage flooding his veins, Jerott glared at him, and Míkál, lifting his head, saw him and gave a mischievous smile. Jerott looked away, just as Gabriel turned from the dragoman and said in his mild, golden voice, ‘Lords: I beg your attention …’

The indictment was damning; inexorable. Gabriel himself conducted the case; recalling how the Scottish lord, Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, had used his standing as Ambassador for France to persuade the lord Suleiman Khan to hand over a girl and a child from the Sultan’s harem and, on being refused, had claimed even that the child was a son of His Grace Henry of France.

‘This is untrue,’ said Gabriel sorrowfully. He spoke this time in Turkish, the interpreter at his side, for appearances. He must have known by now, Jerott supposed, that their command of the language was as fluent as his own.

Gabriel was continuing. ‘That it is untrue I can prove to you in a matter of days, when a courier will show you that the child this man claimed to be here is in fact safe in France. Therefore he lied to the Sultan, a lie which in his clemency the lord Suleiman overlooked, saying merely that he would hand over neither the girl nor the child without further proof from the Ambassador that the child was in fact the son of King Henry … Crawford Efendi could not prove such a thing. He therefore abducted the girl and the child. He further abducted a second child, the adopted son of Názik the nightingale-dealer, having already seduced him; and had caused both children to be taken out of the city, where they were discovered and stopped.’

Gabriel paused, his voice dropping. ‘Why should he do such a thing? Because, lords, this dog of a Christian has fought for St John; held Tripoli against Sinan Pasha; did all in his power to prevent my leaving that vipers’ nest of unbelievers in Malta, even to attempting my life in Zuara. His thoughts towards me are evil.… Learning then that I had a dear son, reared in the home of Dragut Rais in Djerba and Algiers, he took steps to capture the child, and because, moving from country to country in vain hope of eluding him, the boy’s identity became confused with another, he took it upon himself to seize both children, and degrade them, and take them back to the West, where their souls would be wrenched like roses from Paradise and cast into the hell of the heretic.…’

Christ
, thought Jerott. Míkál was admiring his finger-nails. No one interrupted, or asked any questions. He supposed the evidence would come along later: Názik and other bribed witnesses. The royal-bastard story had clearly been fatal. But it might have worked; and he supposed it had had to be tried. Now the mellow voice was going on about a theft from his house, which Jerott found outside belief, and a list of witnesses which was equally unlikely.… Assuming the
accusation was false, why had it been made? Perhaps because, thought Jerott, as that old satyr Gilles had once said,
Turcae non minus sunt insani quam nos circa aurifabrorum opera
. Turks were mad about gold. The theft of gold would strike home where a lot of abstract discussion about children would mean nothing at all.… And here was the third count.

The stirring up of sedition. Gabriel’s voice, tinged with pain, was rolling over the phrases. How gross the guest, the diplomatic guest under their roof, who made profit from the canker within the host’s flesh. All knew of the melancholy fate of the Prince Mustafa, his head turned with pride and ambition, who had thought to win the love of the army and ultimately the throne of the Shadow of God. Rustem Pasha, their well-loved Grand Vizier, had detected it. He himself, coming from Zuara, had seen it. Both had sent messages, urgent messages to Khourrém Sultán, the Sultan’s beloved mistress and wife, that she might softly acquaint the Sultan with this his betrayal by the young man he loved.

So, with sorrow, the father had had to remove the undutiful son, and the Prince Mustafa had been killed. So, he had just heard, the Prince Mustafa’s son of four years had been swiftly and mercifully put to his rest in the city of Bursa.… But far from accepting these things as the will of Allah and allowing the bereaved and betrayed to be silent, mourning their dead, men had lent their ears to a vicious new rumour. A rumour that Mustafa Pasha had been innocent of plot against his royal father. A rumour that Rustem Pasha the Vizier, in guilty concert with the Sultan’s wife Roxelana, had fabricated a plot against the Prince Mustafa, in order to place Roxelana’s own son on the throne.

A cruel and malignant rumour, of which the man standing before them was author.