Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [180]
‘I was uneasy, Your Excellency. It fell to me to keep watch outside. Salablanca watched in your chamber. We did not bring it to Your Excellency’s notice.’
But it had come to His Excellency’s notice. And His Excellency, ruffled more than he would admit by a trying episode with an importunate boy, had ignored Salablanca’s presence and given him neither instructions nor thanks. If he had, that first would-be assailant would never have left his bedroom alive. ‘Salablanca?’ said Lymond.
‘Is dead, Your Excellency. They have carried him inside.… You cannot rise. I will find you a Utter.’
‘No. There is no need,’ Lymond said.
It was possible to sit, and to stand, and to walk. It was possible to see Salablanca where he lay, his eyes open and sightless in his blood-sodden clothes, and to close his lids and take from his neck the prayer-beads he wore, to send to his household in Algiers where there were, comfortingly, so many brothers. It was possible next day, with no humiliating swathe of bandage revealed beneath one’s high shirt and tight cuffs and impeccable doublet, to stand in the graveyard among the stony forest of turbans and hear the Bektashi Baba’s calm voice addressing his Maker.
O God, be merciful to the living and to the dead, to the present and to the absent, to the small and to the great who are among us.… Distinguish him who is now dead by the possession of repose and tranquillity, by favour of Thy mercy and divine forgiveness. O God! increase his goodness, if he be amongst the number of the good; and pardon his sins, if he be ranked among the transgressors. Grant him peace and salvation, O God. Convert his tomb into a delicious abode equal to that of paradise and not into a cavern, like that of hell. Be merciful to him, Thou most merciful of all Beings.
‘Lord, great and true, Thou buriest day in night and night in day. Thou leadest forth the living from the dead and the dead from the living. All things come from Thee and return to Thee again. Forgive the sins of mankind for Thy glory’s sake. And lead us to the Light, for Thou art the Light of Light.’
And it was possible to sail then, in all one’s wealth and magnificence for Constantinople, with the words of Míkál at the graveside, buried deep as the tomb in one’s memory:
‘Duty; friendship; compassion. Which moved him to die for you?’
18
Constantinople
Dear Kate. As you will see from the address, I am staying as a concubine in the harem of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, son of Sultan Setim Khan, son of Sultan Bayezid Khan, King of Kings, Sovereign of Sovereigns; Commander of All that can be Commanded, Sultan of Babylon, Lord of the White Sea and the Black Sea, most high Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, most mighty King of Persia and Arabia, Syria and Egypt, Supreme Lord of Europe and Asia, Prince of Mecca and Aleppo, Possessor of Jerusalem and Lord of the Universal Sea.
You will be glad to know lam keeping well, thanks to a lot of exercise and a good loosening sherbet the first day. The food would not be very acceptable in Hexham, but I am appending a very good recipe for Turkish Delight, for which you will need the pulp of white grapes, semolina flour, honey, rose-water and apricot kernels. Perhaps Charles can get them in Newcastle.
There are two hundred and ninety-nine other girls here: but no one else from Northumberland. Tell Betty I have the dearest little black page. She will laugh when she hears that he answers to Tulip.…
‘Fippy!’
Philippa, who could recognize that cry over two courtyards, also recognized that some people answered to funnier names than Tulip, and grinned, lifting her pen from her diary. She lowered it again to write, in her black script, a large adolescent Ha-ha! under the foregoing, and shutting the book, went off at speed indoors to locate the calling Kuzúm.
He was standing at the top of the stairs to her sleeping-quarters, the cone of yellow hair fanned out with exertion; a wary expression in the round cornflower eyes. ‘Hullo?’ he said.
That ingratiating