Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [156]
‘If it is pure,’ said the Janissary harshly, ‘there is no insult.’
‘Have you ever seen a man starve in order to buy himself a hundred grains daily, and then be deprived of his source? That isn’t an insult,’ said Marthe. ‘That is the root of the tree that grows in the bottom of Hell.’
It was no news that Turks lived on opium. ‘You said something about “when the army is here”,’ said Jerott.
‘It is so. Rustem Pasha, the Grand Vizier, has left Stamboul,’ said the Janissary. ‘From Scutari he brings an army to Aleppo, where it will be joined by the armies of Damascus and Tripoli and Aman. Didst thou not see the soldiers at Antioch? Together they winter here. Then in the spring, my lord marches on Persia.’
‘Another Persian campaign?’ said Jerott. He was thinking. Men, money, munitions, poured into the dry fields of Persia. And none for France, facing not only the Emperor, but the Emperor’s niece newly crowned Queen of England. What of the French invasion of Corsica now? What of his friends, the trained company Lymond had created, which he had abandoned to go on this self-destructive, harrowing search? Paid off for lack of funds? Decimated for want of good weapons? Hell, thought Jerott, staring at the bloodshot rooftops of Hanadan. I’ve had enough. If the brat’s not at Aleppo it’s dead, or it’s going to cost more than our blood to redeem it. If the trail ends here, it ends and I go back to France. My God, I’m a soldier, not a wet-nurse to somebody’s bastard.
‘I prefer you, I think, drunk to sulking,’ said Marthe. ‘Consider. An angel descends with every drop of water and lays it in its appointed place. If it rains, you wül be dry, or you will be wet. Why then flinch or rebel?’
‘Because,’ said Jerott with emphasis. ‘I’m not a bloody Saracen.’
‘What a pity,’ said Marthe. ‘Another difference, I fear, to divide us. Because I, of course, am.’
As always, Jerott rose to the bait. That her remark was a simple statement of truth took a long time to penetrate; but in the end he was brought to admit, in his heart, that given the person she was, it was not beyond understanding. Thinking back, he even remembered how, outside Mehedia, the thought had once crossed his mind when she overplayed, by a fraction, her ignorance of Bektashi dervishes. She had travelled in Moslem countries: she had seen, as Jerott, his voice raised, reminded her, that they treated their women as servants and playthings. It did not trouble her.
She did not say, look at Roxelana. She did not say, look at Kiaya Khátún. But she did say, coldly sardonic, ‘What better hopes have I in Europe? I have no birth, no money, no inheritance, no future. I live from Georges Gaultier’s charity, and the caprice of the Dame. No man of ambition will marry a bastard. To marry beneath me is to become a servant: to accept anything other than marriage is to become a plaything. I have little choice wherever I go. I prefer a society which accepts that I have no choice, and does not pretend that I have. I prefer a God who does what he wills, and rules as he desires, and enjoins on me not to prevent anything against its destiny. I prefer a religion which can say:
Yigĭt Olanlar anilir
Filan oğlu filan diye
Ne anon var, ne baton var
Benzersin sen piçe tanri.
Jerott did not need a translation.
Those who are heroes are known, Such as this man, who is the son of that other …
Thou hast no mother and no father:
Thou resemblest a bastard child, God.
‘You think it blasphemy, no doubt,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. It is divine simplicity, I believe.’
He made one last