Pawn in Frankincense (90 page)

In the end, all the raki Jerott and Archie brought back was in Jerott and Archie. They were quarrelsome and maudlin by turns, and Lymond turned them into the same room as Gaultier and left them alone, without trying to install either information or planning into their oblivious heads.

By then, Philippa, aching as if she had been beaten, had slipped off her outer robe and climbed into the Venetian bed in her body linen, which was embroidered and not very long, her combed hair tidied back with a ribbon. After a moment she got out again and, pulling off the exquisite quilt, made a sleeping-bag of it on the carpet and wondered whether, as one of the underprivileged young, she should occupy it herself. Then she decided that if she were to have a new status forced upon her, she might as well learn to live up to it; and, climbing back into bed, fell astonishingly and profoundly asleep.

She awoke an hour or two later shivering, and recalled with a great drop of the heart where she was sleeping and why. It had become very cold. Craning over the edge of the bed, she saw on the far stretch of carpet the dark shape which must be the quilt; and then, straining, the gleam of Lymond’s hair in the faint moonlight streaming through the high window. She did not reahze that he was awake until his head turned, his eyes dark as a lynx in the night, and his voice said quietly, ‘What is it?’

All Kate’s maternal instincts and her own common sense rose and drowned Philippa’s qualms. She said, ‘I’m cold. And if I’m cold, you must be freezing. Put that quilt back on the bed and come and sleep on the other side. I don’t mind. And who’s to know?’

There was faint amusement in the low voice. ‘My dear girl, there isn’t a soul in the Seraglio who doesn’t believe I’m there anyway.’

Philippa had forgotten. She recovered, and said, ‘Well, put it back anyway. You can’t sleep without it, and neither can I. Heaven knows, the bed’s big enough.’

It was: a remarkable object running to cherubs, with a great deal of pendulous drapery. The quilt, homing back to its blankets, fell over her with a comforting sigh: laying it straight, Lymond’s hand for a second touched her. Philippa sat up. ‘You’re frozen!’

He had moved to the far side. I’m tired, that’s all; so I feel it. Look, you’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘After
Míkál
?’ said Philippa. ‘Anyway, it’s almost legitimate. We’re going to be joined in holy wedlock tomorrow.’ She rather liked the terrible phrase. ‘Did you enjoy your bachelor party?’

‘Archie and Jerott both did,’ he said drowsily. The mattress had hardly moved to his weight, but she knew he was there, lying still, with the furthest extent of the big bed between them. The cold must have kept him awake a long time, for once there, he slipped almost at once into sleep.

Silence. With warmth once more enfolding her, it was strange that she was content just at first to lie awake, thinking in peace, the moonlight slowly searching the bedchamber; the quilt, the crystal cherubs; her partner.

Frightening, that Fate should so turn that Francis Crawford of Lymond, the source of her earliest terror, the hated intruder in her mother’s calm house, should be here, alone and asleep in her bed. How many women, one wondered, had lain adoring that fair head at rest on the pillow?
Why, everywhere he goes
—down through the years came her own hoarse, childish voice—
he has hundreds and hundreds of mistresses
. And Kate’s voice, not quite as amused as it seemed,
Do learn tolerance, infant
. Then Philippa herself fell asleep.

She woke much later because of a movement of the bed and this time lay still, remembering at once where she was. Then the man on the other side of the bed moved again, blindly abrupt in his sleep, and she realized that in the restless slumber of opium he was not an easy bedfellow; hard on her, and harder still on himself. For a while, still half asleep, she drowsed and woke and drowsed again through the disturbance, sometimes aware of his voice. Once he said, clearly enough to be distinguished, ‘Tell me. I can’t understand.
Why did you do it?
’ And added, after a moment, in a queer voice, ‘Poor Eloise.’ Another time he said only, O mill. What hast thou ground …?’ Philippa knew that reference. Her impulse was to move to him as she would to Kuzúm, and put her hand on his arm, but she was afraid of both his pride and his temper.

But in the end it was he himself who, flinging over in some great gesture of escape and despair, touched her body. He recoiled like a spring; like someone who had received his bane-blow, torn half awake by the shock, his expressive body hard with revulsion. Shocked herself by his reaction, Philippa sat up, and in that second he became thoroughly awake; aware of the flurry of movement, and of her alarm. He said, ‘
What have I done?
’ And as, confused and distressed, she did not at once speak, he said wearily, ‘Oh, my God;’ and leaving the bed, crossed the carpet to the furthest corner of the room, and, dropping by the stool there, covered his blind face with his hands.

Sitting rigid, Philippa heard him draw in his breath; and then again; and knew by the sound what he was trying to subdue. She lay back, tears running down her face, and covered her ears with her hands.

When she removed them a long time after he was perfectly silent, his head on his arms, but it was not over, for he spoke, as he had once before, hearing her movement. ‘Philippa …?’

Philippa said fiercely, ‘Look: nothing happened. You only thought it did. You moved in your sleep, that was all.’

He didn’t lift his head, and his voice, muffled by his hands, was not familiar at all. ‘I know. I thought it was somebody else.… Philippa … release me from my promise.’

She put her hands over her mouth, and then took them away. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’

He had pulled his own hands down, looking still at the stool, his face quite turned away. ‘You can.
Philippa. Please let me go.
’

Her refusal this time was a whisper; but he must have heard it, for he didn’t ask her again. The rest of the night Philippa passed lying awake, without moving; without speaking; and keeping to herself all the untoward weight of her grief and her pity. In her diary no entry ever appeared for that night, in which the light-hearted hoyden of Hexham vanished altogether.

Towards morning she thought perhaps Lymond slept, but he didn’t stir, and she could not harass him with the quilt, although the intense cold had gone. Then, weary as she was, she must herself have fallen asleep, for when she next opened her eyes, the corner on the far side of the room was illumined with daylight, and empty.

He had gone to the room Jerott shared with Archie and Gaultier. Shaken unwillingly awake, Jerott heard the cool voice, not quite in its familiar tone. ‘Drunk and in a state of legal uncleanliness. Wake up. We have a lot to discuss.’ Jerott opened his eyes.

Lymond was standing back, waiting for him in his stained hose, his torn shirt pulled off and thrown over one shoulder. His back was to the light. But even so, Jerott was suddenly quiet, and he heard Archie beside him say sharply, ‘Have you had any sleep at all?’

‘I have had delightful dreams,’ said the soft, roughened voice. ‘Fawns in the shape of fairies with musk-fragrant hair. And I have breakfasted on opium. Will you listen, or are you anxious to do all the talking?’

Jerott held down his permanent nausea. ‘Philippa?’

Lymond said, ‘Those who gather frankincense are dedicated unto divine honours, and use no carnal company with any woman. Philippa is well, and deep in blameless slumber. We now have to decide how best to get her and you safely home.’ And this time they listened.

At the end, Jerott said after a long pause, ‘Must you marry her?’

Lymond shrugged. ‘What else? Maidens despoiled, men-children defiled; children brought up in impious abominations. Kuzúm will get over it, but her integrity has gone.’

Jerott said, as Philippa had done, ‘And you?’ And Lymond stared at him, his brows delicately lifted. ‘I shall gather frankincense,’ he replied.

Escorted by Chiausi, they left the Topkapi Serail of the Sultan Suleiman by the sea gate, spared the long procession back through the great courtyards; spared too the curiosity of those who might concern themselves too closely with Roxelana’s affairs. The Sultan’s barge awaited them by the crystal kiosk, rowed by the long line of the mutes. They took their places, four men, two girls and a child, silent in new flowered silks; who had been made to taste in Paradise the chastisement of Hell. The day, thought Philippa, white-faced with the child Kuzúm on her knee, on which men shall be as scattered moths, and the mountains shall be as loosened wool. The day which makes grey the heads of young children …

The words now had meaning. All poetry had meaning, and sorrow she had never envisaged. Behind, veiled in soft rain as the dragon-prowed barge slid across the grey water to Pera, she saw for the last time close at hand the soft, frescoed height of the Seraglio, heart of the Ottoman world, its domes and chimneys and towers, its tall cypresses and gardens picked out in grisaille and gold.

Today, perhaps, the Gate of the Dead would perform its true office for a small boy whose heritage no one knew; who had lived in squalor and perished in fright. A sacrifice to diminish the soul. A sacrifice to colour all the rest of one’s days.

In silence they crossed the water and, hardly speaking, they landed. Philippa carried Kuzúm. Lymond had come for her before leaving, his eyes steady, and she had returned his greeting, her face and voice equally peaceful. A well-governed exercise. Except that you could see still, about his eyes and his brow, the marks of the murderous thing which had touched him when Khaireddin had died.

They disembarked, and found horses waiting to take them up to the Embassy.

Chesnau was waiting, ignorant of everything save for the news that they were all returning that morning. One deduced, from his face, his relief that no diplomatic intervention was necessary: no international incident had taken place. Lymond said nothing about Gabriel. He merely asked for their boxes to be packed and arrangements made for them to leave as soon as the
Dauphiné
could be provisioned.

Their most unexpected welcome, dislocated with emotion, came
from Onophrion Zitwitz. Onophrion the unregarded, who had been sent back to the Embassy on Jerott’s detention and had remained there ever since, consumed with anxiety. Activity of all things was the emollient he desired: he flung himself into the preparations for departure; the monumental architect of other men’s projects; and Lymond asked for the chaplain.

In the plain and pungent philosophy of Philippa’s life, bridal visions had never intruded. Flaw Valleys with Kate and Gideon, their laughter and music had been all she had ever desired. She remembered the wedding in Greece, all sunshine and dancing; the crowned girl and boy with tinsel in their dark hair; and how she had pitied them. But now, preparing for another wedding with a table for altar in a damp Turkish study, and the smell of ink and expediency instead of incense and roses, Philippa thought again of the bride, blushing, receiving her shoe-buckles; and the Pilgrims of Love, giving their hearts and their laughter and the moonlit song of the lyre. And Míkál’s beautiful voice:
The fountains make thee thy bride’s veil; the lyre spins thee thy ribbons; the mallow under thy foot is the hand of thy bridegroom.… Sometimes, one must travel to find what is love
.

She let her mind go just so far; and then, with gentle hands, closed the door she had opened. Then, wearing not her Turkish robe but a plain woollen dress of her own, her hair unbound; with no paint and no jewels but a small silver brooch long ago bought by her father, Philippa walked with Onophrion to the place of her wedding.

Lymond was not there. He came a little late, quickly, changed too into his own doublet and hose, neither too elaborate nor too discourteously simple. They both, thought Philippa flatly, knew all the nuances that etiquette demanded. He gave a comforting smile, and then took his place by her side.

The priest was old. Philippa could hear the witnesses, Jean Chesnau and his chief secretary, shifting a little behind her, impatient with the slow voice. Outside, Onophrion was keeping the door. Of Jerott and the others there was no sign.…