Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [187]
It was a face she had seen before. A great many thoughts went through Philippa’s head in the little silence that followed; but the chief one she found, despite her shaking knees, to be anger. ‘You sent me to the House of the Palm Tree to find him,’ said Philippa to Kiaya Khátún, whom she had last met drinking coffee, in Lyons, with the Lady of Doubtance, that strange old astrologer. ‘And I did; and I’m grateful. But did you mean us both to come here in the end, all the time?’
Kiaya Khátún, friend of Dragut; friend of Khourrém Sultán; skilful administrator who might choose and relinquish her post as she pleased, for there was none other to equal her, looked at Philippa and smiled. ‘Be seated, child; and take qahveh. None will run off with your child. If he cries, you may go and comfort him: the Head Nurse is a good woman but stupid; and remarkably amenable. Now. You were saying … How long ago it seems!’ said Güzel, sipping gracefully. ‘I really cannot remember what I hoped for the boy. But the Dame de Doubtance ‥ the Dame de Doubtance, I remember, was most insistent that you should by some means enter the Seraglio. She thought, I believe, that you would benefit by the experience.’
‘Did she?’ said Philippa, her back stiff. ‘Then since the arrangements to get me in have worked so nicely, I take it there’ll be no difficulty about getting out. Today, for instance.’
‘And leave the boy?’ said Kiaya Khátún softly. And as Philippa did not answer she added, ‘Tell me, my child: do you speak Turkish?’
‘A little.’ Geomalers have very long memories. She wondered what had happened to Míkál, who had taken her to Thessalonika, and had abandoned her. A creature of Gabriel’s, surely, would have killed her prior to destroying the child. Or … Enlightenment broke on her. Did Míkál have not a master, but a …
‘Since you arrived, have you spoken Turkish or shown that you understand it?’
Philippa’s attention returned to the Mistress. ‘No … I don’t think so. I haven’t had a chance. Why?’
‘Good,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘It would prove, I think, beneficial if you continued to show ignorance. You will be taught it, of course. But it is an extremely difficult language to learn.’
Philippa, who had not found it so, opened her mouth, thought, and shut it again. Kiaya Khátún went on. ‘It would be better, also, if your acquaintance with me were not known to exist. You are here at this moment in order that I may conduct an examination. You will say, if you are asked, that this has been done.… You are, I take it, a virgin?’
It occurred to Philippa that never in the whole of her life had she been required to give as much thought to that circumstance, happy or unhappy, as in the last half-hour. ‘Yes,’ she said, not very politely.
Kiaya Khátún smiled. ‘Drink your qahveh,’ she said. ‘You do not consider it so, but the place you will fill is one of high honour. You have heard, I am sure, how the Sultan’s wife Khourrém was no more than a Russian slave-girl in this harem when she won the Sultan’s love. She is called still Roxelana, “the Russian one”. She was then the second only of the Sultan’s four principal ladies: the first, Bosfor Sultán, had already given him his son Mustafa. But it was Roxelana in the end whom the Sultan married: the first ruler for nearly one hundred and fifty years to take a legal wife to himself. Twelve years ago she moved from the Old Seraglio to share his apartments here in Topkapi, and the harem has grown with her and her three sons, now all grown and away. But Roxelana stays, and the Sultan,