Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [114]
The heat was stifling; and the noise, thought Jerott out of his permanent nausea, high-pitched and ululating, might have come from a pack of hysterical hounds. The arena was nothing more than a vast rectangle of plain, neither roped nor in any way circumscribed for the safety of the riders or of the robed and half-naked throng of spectators greeting, arguing, jostling in fez, turban and cap. Sellers of water, of sherbet and sesame bread pushed their way calling through the crowds; a patch of turbulence, marked by bleating, showed where someone had brought a kid and some hens maybe for barter.
Desert Arabs watched in small clusters, silent under striped goat- and camel-hair, their wives veiled in blue cotton smocks, their glass rings glittering no less than their eyes. There were ragged Zinganges, thieves and idlers, selling stolen muscadines and waiting with ready fingers for unguarded purses: a Greek merchant, blue and white turban wrapped round his toque, clapping hands to have sherbet brought to himself and his secretary; women veiled and silent but for the silver chime of the earrings inside their long hair.
Today, Kiaya Khátún was also veiled. Greek-fashion, the white silk fell back from her brow over her long blue-black hair, knotted with gold buttons and pearls and twined with coloured silk ribbons. Her charsháf, falling from the bridge of her nose, covered a fine shift, with wrought silk work at neck and borders and wrists, and she wore a silken coat over it, embroidered with jewels at its edge and dully shining, its leaf patterns damasked in white satin. Under the veil her earrings were tassels of seed pearls, the knots studded with rubies, but her fingers were ringless. From her head to her pale gilded buskins, she spoke of power and wealth.
Beside her, in the Turkish collarless coat, buttoned with acorns, the Aga Morat was attempting, with smiling deference, to disguise the fact that they were quarrelling. His teeth shining white through his beard, he said, ‘My lord Dragut said nothing to the contrary.’
‘My lord Dragut,’ said Kiaya Khátún tartly, ‘could not have foreseen that the prisoners would be driven into such a position that they would be ready at any cost to attempt an escape. They are to be kept here, by whatever means, until the Knights of St John have made their attack on Zuara and have failed. If I cannot keep them under lock and key, I will keep them with drink and with drugs. Once they are comatose, you are welcome to visit whichever you choose.’
‘I find it difficult to understand,’ said the Aga, smiling harder still through his black beard, ‘why then they are here and not locked in the palace.’
‘Because, such is the wonder of your horsemen, my lord Aga, that my palace this day would empty itself, leaving the prisoners to Allah knows what mischief. Here, under your omnipotent eye, at least they are safe.’
And the Aga Morat, longing in his eyes and rage in his heart, said, ‘I bow to thy wisdom. What is undone may be spun again … after Zuara.’
Which was why Jerott Blyth, having allowed the sour milk to pass him, and the water-carrier with his sewn bearskin over his shoulder and his brass staff and cup, suddenly saw weaving through the crowds standing beside him something he did want, carried strapped over his shoulders by a crooked, grey-bearded pedlar in a frieze cloak and goatskin boots.
From over a hundred heads Kiaya Khátún also saw him, recognized the shape of the bladder he carried and said to the Aga Morat, ‘There is the seller of harech. If they do not buy from him now, I shall see that he is sent to them later. By this evening we shall have some in the palace.’ It amused her to think that Dragut, the dreaded killer of the Levantines, was also a true son of Islam, and in his palace permitted no drinking of wine. None the less, she well knew, he would approve any order of hers which kept Francis Crawford and his adherents idle on Djerba while Islam overthrew the attacking Knights of St John.
She looked over all the intervening