Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
They swept into the sunlight in clouds of incense and garlands to the music of lyre, zampouna and meskale, the bride and bridegroom handlocked with silver and flowers, gilded crowns of worked paper on their dark heads. With the veils thrown back, and the long shreds of gold tinsel like fountain water sparkling and tinkling behind, Philippa saw how young they were, girl and boy. They would spend all their lives here, she to bear children and work in the fields, to cook and draw water and spin, and to bruise wheat and rice there, in that Corinthian capital, upturned for a mortar.
He would fish, on windless nights, as they had done under the Caesars, with his four brothers in one boat, with a lamp and a trident; he would plough the painted shards in the fields with his unwheeled plough behind his two oxen: he would take his stick and his axe, when he had to, to fight off Bulgar nomads; Turkish brigands; he would sow his crop, and, when the time came, he would hand over, if he must, his most beautiful child to the Commissars of Tribute.
Seated on a splendid new carpet, her embroidered tunic carefully spread, her hair wound with ribbons and beads, the bride giggled beside her new husband; their parents, stout, toothless, gleeful, stood behind calling. It was the time for presents: each villager, walking up, bent and, kissing the girl, laid a small gift on her lap, hardly ceasing to talk, while she, searching behind her, found and offered to each a small sheaf of flowers in return. They were roses, Philippa saw, tied and plaited with care in fine spangles.
She had a pair of buckles from her old shoes. Kate had bought them in Newcastle because they looked like two snakes in silver, and therefore very seemly, said Gideon, for Somervilles. Philippa brought them out before her worse nature could catch up with her better and, kneeling, put them quickly on the little bride’s lap.
It was clear that the girl had no idea whatever what they were for, and Philippa, whose Turkish and Arabic were prodigious, had, except for esoteric pronouncements of love, no suitable phrases in Greek. Smiling broadly and firmly, she got her roses and backed, until she was within reasonable distance of the spit with the wild boar on it, and then sat swallowing nobly until the feasting began.
When the Pilgrims left, they set off in moonlight, with the villagers for their escort until they had reached the main track. They had danced the Romeika and the Candiote, the Wallachian and the Arnaoute; they had sung, they had told stories and long poems; there had been laughter and drinking. Between Greek Christians and the Pilgrims of Love there was no barrier, Philippa found. The Pilgrims, their philosophy Arabian, their arts Persian and Turkish, embraced love and merriment as the Greeks did; and the Greek nature responded.
The Pilgrims played. The lyrist walked ahead of them, showing the way, his rough three-stringed lyre like an old rebec, held and plucked at arm’s length: behind, torches flickered and laughter sparked around the little mule as Philippa rode along, talking to the villagers who thronged on foot around her with Míkál as her interpreter. They ask what years thou hast, and from where thou comest, and where is thy husband?’
‘Tell them I’m sixteen, and I come from the Border between England and Scotland, and I’m not married,’ said Philippa. She had spent her birthday in the Lazaretto at Zakynthos, and they had taught Sheemy Wurmit’s moulting parrot to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ as a surprise, and she had been so pleased she cried.… ‘Why hast thou no husband?’ added Míkál.
The inquiry, it seemed, was on his own account. Philippa stared down at him, astonished. He said, ‘In thy country girls marry, do they not, at fourteen; at fifteen? Thou hast nothing? No lover, no sweetheart at home?’
Philippa choked, and covered it up as well as she could, dismissing the image of some stiff-necked young Tynesider, cap in hand, knocking at Flaw