Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [133]
With Gabriel gone, the Turks had no reason to harm a child who might or might not be an Ambassador’s son. But Gabriel’s agents, whoever or whatever they might be, had their money to earn. If he died, the child was to die. And who would prevent it, if she were not there?
Philippa turned, her gaze falling past the Bektashi Baba on the little courtyard below. It was empty. ‘I understand it all,’ she said. ‘I have one favour to ask. Could I see the child?’
The black eyes did not move from her, but she could sense the faintest hesitation before the Baba spoke. ‘But of course, daughter,’ he said. ‘His guardian, alas, is ill; and he is with her here until her fate will be known.’
‘She is dying?’ said Philippa.
‘As the hand puts the candle to rest. Our Order says, She becometh the secret, she will become Real with the Real One. She is in here. The child is with her.’ And moving gently from the window, the Baba stepped down to the lower part of the room, slid his feet softly into his slippers, and led the way from the chamber.
The room where Kuzucuyum’s guardian lay ill was a small one: the carved lattice was shut, and only the display plates on their high cornice shelf reflected the sunshine filling the chistlìk’s gardens outside. There was a niche in the wall, in which sat some books, and a small cupboard on top of which bedding-rolls lay, and a blanket. Otherwise there was nothing at all but a tapestry mattress laid on the carpeted floor, and a still form, its head neatly wound with brushed black and grey hair, lying sheeted upon it. The Baba smiled and withdrew, closing the door, and as he did so, the head on the mattress stirred weakly and turned. It was Evangelista Donati.
If Philippa was astounded, the sick woman herself was at first paralysed by the shock of the encounter. Her black eyes, shining like agates, stared at Philippa; her cheeks, loose and yellow with illness, gathered in folds about the tight mouth; then with violence thrusting herself on one elbow she spoke, in the tones of the governess: the hard, precise timbre, inflected with Italian, which Philippa had heard her use, over and over, to Gabriel’s sister Joleta. ‘What are you doing here? Who sent you?’
Back in Scotland, as the duenna and confidante of the child-sister Joleta, Evangelista Donati had been a woman of power and maturity, though no longer young. The years spent with Gabriel and his sister had not been innocent ones; but they had filled her life with vitality; and with Joleta’s death at the hands of Graham Malett, her brother, more than a wicked, wayward, beloved creature had died. All Evangelista Donati’s purpose in living had gone.
And after she had denounced Graham Malett; had told the world the truth about this great and gallant knight who was great only in vice, she had fled from the world, and from his vindictiveness, until, hiding in the house of her brother Marino Donati at Zakynthos, she must have met the child; and learned who he was, and have appointed herself, flouting Gabriel, the guardian of the boy whom he had sworn to degrade and had threatened to have killed.
So Philippa calculated. And so, looking at that anxious, malevolent face, she interpreted the cause of her distress and, walking forward, dropped on her knees by the mattress and answered immediately. ‘It’s all right. I’m from Mr Crawford. I’ve come to buy back his son.’
The sick woman sank back. The Baba had been right: Madame Donati had about her, like twilight, the climate of death. The handsome woman who had fascinated Peter Cranston, who had so irritated Sybilla, had gone, and here were only the material elements of her: the beaked nose; the thin, ringed hands. Madame Donati said, thinly, ‘They are afraid of Graham. They will not sell him.… Is Mr Crawford here also? How … how did you find the child?’
Philippa said, ‘Someone in France suggested I go to your brother’s house at Zakynthos. Mr Crawford didn’t know: he