Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [155]
Through a haze of wine, which affected his efficiency very little, Jerott initiated inquiries at Tarsus. He had all the merchants of Scanderoon narrowly questioned. He examined the records. He collected Marthe, who was standing, absently covered in Baghdad pigeons, in the Syrian merchant’s courtyard, discussing the uses of turpentine. And when all these activities had drawn a blank, he bespoke the services of baggage-mules, horses, a Janissary and two Ajémoghláns the following day, to convoy Marthe and himself in safety to Aleppo. Then he returned to the khan, ate a leaden meal of mutton and rice, quarrelled with Marthe and, retiring to his mattress, drank himself into a nightmarish sleep, punctuated by the howling of jackals.
The journey from Scanderoon to Aleppo, which occupied slightly more than three days, was marked by no roguish departure from the general atmosphere of exasperation and gloom. At Belan, they slept on the ground. At Antioch, between high Biblical rocks, they lodged in a house, also on bare ground, with a pillow, a mattress and a quilt. They crossed the plain of Antioch, and hired a boat over the Orontes, which was low. They left the wildfowl and the water-buffaloes of the coast and met instead the tented villages of the Bedouins, with flocks of dangle-eared goats and the thick-tailed Syrian sheep, dragging thirty pounds of fat and wool at its back.
They had no provisioning to do. The Janissary visited the villages and called at the low goat-hair tents to buy bread-cake and water, and brought them goat’s milk and yoghourt and dates to add to the meat and sour butter they carried. On the last evening, approaching Hanadan, a village eight miles from Aleppo, there occurred the only incident in which Janissary and Ajémoghláns were required to act in their protective capacity.
The raid in fact came from nowhere just before the sudden extinguishing of night. Two of the horses had gone lame, and their reduced pace had made them late in arriving within the safety of Hanadan. Torches had been lit, to scare off brute dog and jackal as much as to frighten off thieves. But even so, the raiders perhaps believed that the little caravan was very much more numerous and heavily laden than in fact it was. They came whirling out of the darkness, on small Arab horses: a blur of white headgear, coarse cloaks and striped kaftans, with the burning pitch shining red on their swords. Then the Janissary, scimitar at his side, fired off a hackbut, and throwing it down, charged steel flashing with the Ajémoghláns at his heels; and the raiders, seeing the economy of the luggage and the scarcity of well-plenished merchants, weighed risk against risk and, bringing their horses round, rearing, made off in the dark.
The Janissary, remarkable so far for his silence, returned pleased and loquacious. The man with one eye—had they noted?—the leader was Shadli, the dog, the son of a drunkard, who forced money from every caravan of note from Scandaroon to Aleppo, and sometimes from Aleppo as far as the Grand Sophy’s frontier. Demanded money, and if the caravans did not pay, then the tribes descended and lives and money, all were lost.
‘I have heard,’ said Marthe, ‘there are Kurds in these mountains who worship the Devil.’
‘It is true,’ said the Janissary. ‘God is good, they say; and will harm nobody; but the Devil is bad, and must be pleased, lest he hurt them. But these are not Kurds, Khátún. These are Bedouin, who call themselves the Saracens of Savah and, living in their tents, earn their livelihood thus. But they are spendthrifts. The money goes: always they want more. When the army is here, you will see: then they raid the opium caravans and sell direct to our soldiers. When our army goes to war,’ said the Janissary, ‘all the opium-bearing fields are despoiled for their comfort and courage.’
Jerott found,