Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [106]
Kiaya Khátún’s eyes, amused, studied the girl for a moment; but Kiaya Khátún’s voice, undisturbed, concluded her song.
Il n’y a beste ne oyseau
Qu’en son jargon ne chante ou crie
Le temps a laissié son manteau
De vent, de froidure et d’ennui…
‘I know,’ said Güzel cheerfully, laying down her lute. ‘He was here earlier, watching Youssef. Extraordinary, is it not, how he cannot bear music? Here, in the land of the Lotophagi, where we should make love and live of the dew, and the juice of flowers and roses.… And you, as well as Odysseus, are discontented.’
Youssef, laying his papers aside, had risen slowly from his low stool, and bending over the nearest water-tray, was preparing his pots of pigment. As the girl watched, he stirred the water with his finger, and set swimming upon it, drop by drop, the oily colours: cerulean and indigo, maize, russet, umber and aubergine; spot by spot merging, blending, coalescing and shoaling, in forms elliptic and cycloid; into whorl and veining under the soft, titillating finger. ‘Can he hear your music?’ said Marthe.
‘Youssef has no tongue. He cannot speak; but he can hear,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘Does it not please you, to live in the company of such men? Your young, dark-haired friend is learning to recognize that he is in love with you. You should consider him.’
‘Should I?’ said Marthe. Beside her, the old man had shaken drops of sage and vermilion on his water-mosaic. She watched him shape them. ‘Poppies,’ she said. ‘Güzel, they are beautiful. This and your music … you have happiness. Why cannot I find it?’
‘Because you do not look in the right places,’ said Kiaya. ‘But why consult me? I only give you advice which you do not take. Look, he is placing the paper now on the water.’
Marthe did not look. In a voice which she could not quite prevent from shaking, ‘Jerott Blyth is nothing,’ she said. ‘I would choose a cur, a cat, a house goose for company sooner.’
‘He is a man,’ said Güzel quietly.
Silence fell. His arms bare, his movements smooth with the skill that defeats age, Youssef lifted the sheet of paper floating on the colour-skeined water and, turning it dyed side uppermost, laid it flat.
On a groundwork of delicate veining, a handful of poppies glowed, their vermilion petals and green leaves spiralling in an echoing mosaic of colour. Her eyes full of tears, looking at it, Marthe repeated, ‘It is beautiful. Is there nothing for me?’
Her fine eyes watching the girl, ‘What about Odysseus?’ said Kiaya Khátún.
Marthe turned away, and moved to the door. ‘He is not a man,’ she said. ‘He is Chaos, a mythical bird with a name, but no body; agreeable only to the eye of the mind.… The Aga Morat’s tents have come back.’
‘He finds the plains here suit his cavalry trainers.… Recognize him, then, with your mind. Why not? Two cold temperaments may consort well together.’
Marthe looked round. ‘There is a saying: When two hungry people lie together, a beggar is born. He will get what he will get; and so shall I.… Shall I play for you?’ And taking the lute Kiaya quietly held out, the girl Marthe sat, her face pale with the heat, and added crisply, ‘If I serenade Mr Crawford, perhaps it will make my regard for him plainer.’
She had a high voice; not trained as was Güzel’s, but tuneful and pure. Through the still heat of Djerba the words floated with an almost professional clarity:
Je prie à Dieu qu’il vous doint pauvreté
Hiver sans feu, veillesse sans maison
Grenier sans blé en l’arrière-saison
Cave sans vin tout le long d’été.
Je prie à Dieu, le roi de paradis,
Que mendiant votre pain alliez querré Seul, inconnu, et en étrange terre
Non entendu par signes ni par dits …
At the end, ‘It is a way of life you defend,’ said Kiaya Khátún, unmoved. ‘But not necessarily a good one.’
She said no more, although the old