Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [189]
‘Only French,’ said Philippa apologetically, with a gasp as a heavy hand whacked her flanks.
‘Then this is Fleur de Lis, and the others have Turkish or Italian names. You will get to know.’ Fleur de Lis was short-legged, with a neck like Venus and the head of a saint. Her comments had been not only the best barbed but the most unflinchingly true. She said, ‘Tu as douze ans?’
‘If you think I look like twelve, then I’m twelve,’ said Philippa kindly. They were all around her now, helping the maids to pour rosewater and wrap her in towels. Her hair, washed and rubbed and pomaded, was pinned on top of her head, her blood ran in wide, silken channels and they had taken her bones out and polished them. Philippa stood up and shut her eyes in a daze of mental anguish and physical euphoria, and propelled by small soft hands, moved to the beds in the outer hall. There was a flash of white skirts, and a voice screamed ‘Fippy!’
It was Kuzúm, naked, his eyes blue as the sea in his shining pink face; his yellow hair, curled by the steam, sticking up in wet spikes and roulades. He ran into her arms.
‘He wouldn’t sleep until he’d seen you, Khátún,’ said the under-nurse with him; and as if she didn’t understand, Philippa smiled at her over the child’s yellow head, and sitting down on the couch, sat him up on her knee.
‘What you agoing do?’ he said.
Philippa smiled and kissed the nape of his neck. ‘Sleep, my cherub.’
‘Kuzúm sleep aside Fippy? What’s there?’ said Kuzúm with interest, and pushed one fat finger under her towel.
‘Me,’ said Philippa cheerfully. ‘And oh, Kuzúm … look at all your lovely new aunties!’
But in her heart she was saying: ‘Khaireddin Crawford … we are two people who may never know what it is to be a man or a woman. But we shall make friends, and find happiness, and comfort each other.’
By the time Lymond left Thessalonika, bound for Constantinople, both Philippa and the boy had been in the harem for some weeks. He learned this himself, almost at the outset of the voyage, by the simple accident of encountering the ship which had taken Philippa, now on its way south.
To Georges Gaultier, and indeed the master and crew of the Dauphiné, it had seemed an excuse at last for slackening the ruinous speed at which they had been held since leaving Malta. In this they were disappointed. If the girl and the child were in the Seraglio, they were safe perhaps from any vengeance Gabriel might have wreaked from the grave. But if any petition for their freedom were to be made, it must be made to the Sultan before he left, as was rumoured, to march south with his army. And further…
‘It is to be understood,’ said Onophrion Zitwitz deprecatingly to M. Gaultier, as he ended his customary tirade a day or two later. ‘The girl is young and inexperienced, and moreover plainly reared. Plunged into luxury; decadence … forced to witness and take part in who knows what licentious conduct … It is not unnatural that His Excellency wishes to make all speed possible.’
They were then within sight of the narrow straits of the Dardanelles, having been tossed backwards and forwards in extreme discomfort since leaving harbour. Autumn winds, pranking all round the compass, combined with sudden sail-drenching rainstorms, had held them up in spite of every expert device and had exhausted the oarsmen to an unfortunate degree. ‘We’ll be in the narrows tonight,’ said Gaultier, his lean cheeks raw with the wind. ‘Why the hell doesn’t he get on a horse and ride for the Porte, if he’s in such a hurry?’
M. Zitwitz picked up the remains of the broker’s uneaten cold meal, and hesitated, as if unwilling to risk a discourtesy. Then he said, in the same tone of deference, ‘Because, sir, one cannot carry this beautiful spinet on horseback. Is it not so? And to present petitions, he must call in state, with his full train and the King of France’s new gift.… In the narrows and in the Sea of Marmara beyond we shall have shelter. It will not be long, sir.’
‘It was too long,’ said Georges Gaultier bitterly, ‘six months ago.’
Thoughtfully, Onophrion went