Pawn in Frankincense (91 page)

Marthe had no interest in marriage. Marthe was in brief and competent charge of Kuzúm, who was worried by Fippy in a strange dress which fitted her middle, and no
kohl
on her eyes. Philippa thought suddenly, with a frisson which ran like wind through her nerves,
Now she is my sister.…
Then she felt Lymond glance at her swiftly, and forced herself to forget it.

The words of the Mass went over her head. She made her mechanical responses, and heard his voice, sealing his pledges. Other people married young, to men they didn’t know, and had no dispensation such as she had. To sleep alone; to plan her own destiny. A virgin married, with a son not her own.… Kate always said, thought Philippa, blinking, that the Somervilles were mad to a man. Then
Lymond’s hand on her arm guided her to her feet and then dropped. ‘It’s all over,’ he said.

Etiquette was silent on the answer to that. He did not offer to kiss her. Philippa said, to the scandalization of priest and secretary and chargé d’affaires, ‘I think I’d like to get drunk.’

They all called her
madame
. There was no wedding-feast, but a dinner now preparing, to be laid out for them all in an hour or so’s time. Onophrion, his mind on his ovens, spread before them his deferential good wishes and fled. Lymond said, ‘Come out for ten minutes.’ Then as she studied him with sober brown eyes he had said, smiling a little, his eyes tired, ‘It isn’t a command. You must do as you please. But I thought a little air might help us both.’

Philippa said, overwhelmed with repentance. ‘I’m sorry. Kate always said I’m a lout. Are you feeling all right? Can’t
you
go and get drunk?’

He picked up her cloak and held it for her, his teeth white as he smiled. ‘You have still some things to find out about me. I don’t drink. In any case, think of the example to Kuzúm.’

She took a little time working that out, as they walked down the hill through the morning traffic of Pera, their Janissary following behind. Certainly, there had been no raki last night on his breath, last night of all nights when one would have expected it. She thought of him, unwillingly, as he had looked in the shadows, his arms crossed, his head buried between them, and compared it with another memory, sharp in her mind. They were threading their way down to the Golden Horn, past the burial-ground and tekke of dervishes, when Philippa suddenly said, ‘Was it
Jerott
 … Jerott who drank too much on the
Dauphiné?
’

He did not quite know what she meant, but he said mildly, ‘Jerott, I suppose, has certainly been known to drink too much, on board ship or off it. So until last year have I. He’ll stop, no doubt, when he has resolved his trouble with Marthe.’

‘Why did you stop?’ she asked. Someone had engaged their Janissary in heated argument. Lymond didn’t look back.

He shrugged. ‘One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.’

She did not put her next question. He raised an eyebrow and said, ‘What restraint! Will you do something for me?’

‘What?’ said Philippa warily.

‘As we pass, slip into the tekke. Someone will speak to you. If they say,
Aşk olsun
,’ answer them, ‘
Aşkin cemal olsun
’… can you remember that?’

‘I heard it all the way to Thessalonika,’ said Philippa. She had gone very pale. ‘Then what?’

‘Follow wherever he takes you. He is a friend.’

For a moment longer she stood, looking at him. Then she said, ‘You gave me a promise. I have done what you asked.’

‘And I shall keep my word,’ Lymond said. ‘So far as fortune will let me.…
Now!
’

The dark door of the tekke opened up on her left. In a moment, Philippa was inside. ‘
Aşk olsun
,’ said the soft voice of Míkál.

Ten minutes later, decidedly changed in appearance, Philippa walked again into the street.

She had no idea where she was going; only that, robed in veils once more, Moslem fashion, she was to follow the slender robed shape of Míkál just ahead, keeping her head modestly low, trying only not to lose sight of him as he threaded his way down to the boats and across the Golden Horn, back to the city they had just left with such pain. There a donkey was waiting for him, its panniers full of red earthenware, and he mounted it and sat, his dirty feet stuck out on either side, while she trudged at its side.

She had never before walked in the city: never seen this from the straw of her cage when she bumped through with Archie, or when the Janissaries brought her back, veiled and chained, on their horses. She climbed the hill to Suleiman’s great new mosque, the monument to his glory, still unfinished, the marble columns from buried Byzantium being levered still into place, the tomb waiting for its magnificent master. Mustafa now would never come to worship there in the robes of his father. Of Roxelana’s sons, the fragile adoring disciple of Mustafa was already failing: the other two eyeing and circling, prepared to light out the succession perhaps over all their father had erected.

Perhaps she had seen Ottoman power at its height at this moment, in this city lying under its uneasy winter, awaiting the flowering season when the sharp lilac-pink of the Judas tree would cloud the gold of the cupolas, and the tulips bar the short grass in the Seraglio gardens, where the gazelles came to graze and later the soft wind would be filled with the smell of carnations.

Past Suleiman’s Mosque and the high walls of the Old Seraglio, with the house of Názik the nightingale-dealer at its foot, now shuttered and closed, the birds silent and gone. The covered market, the channelled chords of its commerce vibrating with sound: a bright-winged aviary like Názik’s of deep-throated men. The pigeons, before Beyazit’s Mosque, where another story-teller sat, telling the tale of the Forty Viziers, but not as the Meddáh used to tell it who had now joined the First Story-teller Suhâib Rûmi in Paradise, where the ground is pure wheaten flour mixed with musk and saffron, its stones being hyacinths and pearls, and of gold and silver its palaces. Or so the boy Ishiq said.

Ignorant of these things, Philippa followed Míkál until the donkey stopped before a stone house set in waste ground where a dog nosed in a courtyard full of sour rubble and weeds, and the door was fast locked.

Míkál tapped while she stood by the donkey; and presently, the warped door creaked open, and the frightened face of a negress, peering through, retreated to allow Míkál and Philippa to climb the steps and slip in. Then they walked down a passage and into a room full of people.

‘Enter, children of sloth,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘My God, I thought you were never coming. Míkál …?’

‘They are watching the house. You say there is only one boat? For nine people?’

Nine people. Philippa, pulling the veil wide-eyed from her face, saw with a leapfrogging heart that they were all there, Jerott and Marthe, Archie and Gaultier. A large old man with white hair whose extreme placidity struck an odd note in the feverish air of the room. And … 
Tippy!’
someone screamed, and flung himself into her arms.

‘Dear, dear,’ said Philippa, hugging him, weeping. ‘You can’t get rid of some people; no matter how much you try.’

‘Actually,’ said Lymond, ‘we’ve one boat and a raft. While we were in the Seraglio, Master Gilles has been busy.’

‘
A raft?
’ said Gaultier. He turned round, his fingers closing on air, his face ashen. ‘A raft? My God, the thieving old bastard.…
He’s taken the treasure!
’

The old man’s bushy eyebrows reared in his big face. ‘Quiet yourself, Pharisee.
Turpe est Doctori, cum culpa redurgit ipsum
. One set of thieves is enough. I have merely completed my inventory.’

Míkál was peering through a crack in the shutters. ‘More are coming. There is little cover, were one to shoot. There are no muskets?’

‘There are no muskets,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t be blood-thirsty.… We have two vehicles. Suppose we employ them.’

It was not easy, climbing one by one down that vertical ladder into the small rocking boat at its foot. Jerott took the small raft, with Philippa and Kuzúm, while the other six crowded into the boat. Lymond, closing the cupboard and bestowing the trapdoor neatly up above, was the last. Then they were afloat in the great underground cavern, in the world of green water and dim drowning pillars, the roar of the fall in their ears.

To Archie and Lymond himself it was no great surprise, after Jerott’s description. Míkál clearly also knew what to expect. But to Philippa, holding Kuzúm still at her side, it was like the last mysterious station, dark, enchanted and cruel, of some terrible Odyssey. Ahead, the light of the boat slid between the black pillars and sank green into the waters, filled with flickering fish. Jerott, lightless, poled his silent way after until, distant from the thundering inflow, he was able to answer her questions. Her last was a natural one. ‘When did you all come?’

Jerott said, ‘We’ve been coming all day nearly, in different ways. Francis had it arranged early this morning, first with Míkál and then with the rest of us. Then he got the Embassy preoccupied, you see with … various …’

‘I see,’ said Philippa. ‘It would have been awkward, I suppose, if I’d had a nerve-storm and stopped the wedding just as you were all climbing out of the window, or whatever you did. But I really would like to have been told.’

Jerott cleared his throat. ‘He didn’t like doing it.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ said Philippa. They didn’t speak the rest of the way.

She was persuading Kuzúm into the darkness of the tunnel when they all heard, far across the dark cistern, the sounds of a fierce hammering, muffled by distance.

‘They’re breaking into the house.’ Lymond, leaning down, his hand on her arm, said, ‘Philippa, there’s no time to coax him. Hand him to Marthe, and jump up yourself. We have to get rid of the boat.’

Then she was in a black, reeking conduit, just high enough to let them walk stooping, and when Kuzúm stood suddenly still, frenzied rejection on his white dirty face, she helped Marthe tie her handkerchief over his mouth.

Lymond scuttled the boat, sending the small raft first spinning into the darkness; and then quickly and silently rebuilt the entrance with bricks. Jerott, the dim lamp in his hands, looked at him for a moment in question, and then without speaking pushed past to Gaultier and Gilles and led the way forward. For good or evil, their retreat was cut off.

On the long, scrambling journey to the treasure-chamber, none of them spoke. Míkál, sure-footed and slender, helped Marthe and Philippa through the narrow, rubble-blocked openings, and Jerott, his teeth on edge with his slowness, walked behind the old man. Gaultier, the least agile of them all and the most desperate, thrust painfully through, battering himself and colliding with others, with Archie a noiseless shadow behind. Last of all Lymond picked his way bearing Kuzúm, the little boy’s face in his shoulder, the second lamp in his hand.

There was no noise behind. There was no sound ahead, but the slithering crunch of their feet scaling the uneven landslides of limestone and brick, and the sudden rattling fall of small gravel disturbed by their weight. Scrambling on grimly, hot and dirty in her long robes, Philippa wondered about Marthe and her uncle, and the secret they seemed to have kept from them all. She was not clear, from what Jerott had said, exactly what part in the business Pierre Gilles had played. On other points, too, Jerott had been exceedingly brief. When she had asked what would happen now to the relics, Jerott, on the other hand, had given an unamused smile.’ You weren’t
present at the interview between Marthe and Francis this morning. He called her one of nature’s bloody little hermaphrodites. Then he told her she was a mercenary bitch and could pay for it.’

Philippa said, ‘When did he say that? This morning? Not last night?’

‘Look, he wasn’t in any state to command language like that last night,’ Jerott had said. ‘Anyway, he hardly saw her except at the chess game. No, this morning. Why?’

‘She doesn’t hate him,’ Philippa had said. ‘Last night she wanted to help.’

And Jerott had paused before saying, ‘Well, I’m damned sure she won’t want to help now. We’re using this conduit as a means to get through to the Hippodrome and out before Roxelana traces and stops us. She and Gaultier and Gilles can all take from the chamber in passing such small relics as they can put in their sleeves or their purses. All the rest must be left. The master has spoken.’

He sounded disenchanted and angry. Philippa had said, ‘Do you think Roxelana would really be interested in pursuing Gaultier and Marthe? Gilles wasn’t even at the Seraglio.’

‘You have put your finger,’ Jerott had said blandly then, ‘on the point at present exercising M. Gaultier. On the other hand, the only way to be sure is to stay behind and see whether they kill you or not.’

The path had begun to drop steeply. There was some kind of aperture, heavily barred, on their right, and then the tunnel plunged ahead into darkness. She thought she could detect some distance ahead a cleared fork, with a passage running off to the right while the main channel went on, steadily climbing. Behind them, Lymond’s voice said softly, ‘Stop.’

They all halted but Gaultier. It was Gilles who wound his powerful fingers into his arm, and holding him, gave a short, curious whistle.

There was no sound. But a shadow detached itself from other, different shadows and, racing towards them, flung itself on Pierre Gilles. Philippa swallowed. It was a cat. No, it was a long-bodied grey beast like a cat, with a small, pointed black muzzle, and whiskers and little round ears. It sniffed round the anatomist’s face and beard, apparently in affection, and then slipped down his body and stood before them on the path, head tilted and one paw upraised. Then, silently, it ran backwards and forwards into the depths of the tunnel, pausing every third or fourth time to look up at its master.

They all stood where they were, thought Philippa, bewitched as if the beast had been one of Archie’s pet tigers. Then Gilles bent, and scooping the animal up, turned to Lymond and jerked his great head. Jerott saw it too. Arms outspread, in silence he began pushing them all back, up the hill of the tunnel, and blew out the torches.