Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [182]
Its Master the Sultan. Her master. And the master of this, Lymond’s son.
Embarking at Thessalonika, Kuzúm had been interested in the ship; and had gone with her confidingly, and had allowed himself to be rolled in a real rug in a real hammock for his afternoon sleep. Only when he awoke and neither his nurse nor Madame Donati was there, and he was still on the ship, and his meal was late, and different, and in different bowls, did his chin tremble; and when Philippa told him, slowly and clearly, that Madame Donati had had to go away but that he was going with her for a little holiday to a big house to find some new toys he bent his head so low that only by kneeling could Philippa see the tears run slowly off his round cheeks and catch the one whispered word: ‘Home.’ It was when she had to deny this that the real crying started, developing into a fragmented screaming that could be heard all over the ship, with the same word gasped over and over. She left him after a while, when he would not let her touch him and her every word seemed to make matters worse, and sat listening in the next chamber, the tears making unnoticed furrows in her own dirty face; powerless to help.
What was home? Djerba? Algiers? He had been too small to recall that: probably too small to recollect his first nurse or even his mother. Home was probably that formal, unfriendly house at Zakynthos, where he must have stayed with the Donatis for the better part of a year before being taken away on his travels with the Children of Tribute.
But Madame Donati had gone with him. And however unaccustomed to small children she was; however unbending and acid, she had loved him. With astonishment still, Philippa remembered the yearning in the sick woman’s eyes as the child came to her; and the look on her face when she embraced him for what she knew would be the last time.
From her, Kuzucuyum had had love, and a grounding in English which someone else had also obviously begun, long ago. He had become used to travelling because, whatever the change in surroundings, his routine, Philippa guessed, had been kept uniform, a feat which must have required something approaching fanaticism. And that was the root of the difficulty now. Kuzucuyum had taken to her. He was quick and happy by nature, she thought; and affectionate. But all the rest was his world. It had fallen apart, and she could not put it together again.
He cried, at intervals, all through the night, and even when quiet was shaken, in sleep, with single, spasmodic sobs. He ate nothing. The sight of her, Philippa found, was enough to start an eruption for the whole of next morning: in the afternoon she sent in her new little black slave Tulip with some yoghourt and sat with her head aching, listening.
Silence. Tulip was eight. One of the Children of Tribute, he had been picked by Madame Donati to serve her because, although he had joined them from Egypt, by some freak of chance he spoke not only Arabic but English. Sitting beside him the previous night, when he also had shed a few tears, very easily assuaged, Philippa guessed that his mother had served in a renegade household, perhaps of a merchant or seaman turned Moslem corsair. At times his accent had distressing overtones of Cockney. At the moment, to Philippa, listening next door, it had the timbre of angelic choirs. He was speaking; there was silence; there was more speaking: