Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [193]
Long ago by the post; by the interminable exchange of secretary and messenger from Stamboul to Sofia to Ragusa to Venice; across Europe to Anet or Fontainebleau, he had known of this slow, seaborne embassy, and of the elaborate gift which might reach the Sultan in time to sweeten his mind towards France; to persuade him to send Dragut and all his fleet of renegade seamen and corsairs to support France’s attack on Florence and Corsica.
Now it was here; and the Sultan, accepting it, was about to march into Persia to light a war of more moment to him than a petty investment in France’s affairs was ever likely to be. The timing was bad: one had to accept it; and join in the cultivated and slightly derisory laughter, and make capital out of the pleasures or trials of the voyage.
It surprised the Baron de Luetz to be asked questions: perfectly permissable questions, courteously framed, and with no malicious intent. It surprised him still more to find his answers the subject of speculative discussion, bulwarked by a formidable massif of facts. Somewhere on the Dauphiné, on her dilatory journey from home, there was a tireless mind which had made it its business to observe, analyse and digest; and for whose findings the Baron began to feel considerable respect.
Whatever the aforesaid pleasures and trials of his voyage, Crawford, it was clear, had made it his business to talk to many people, from the eminent to the most casual trader and mercenary. To his observations on the struggle in Italy between France and the Emperor Charles, M. d’Aramon could add his own latest news from dispatches. To his information, political, commercial and social, on the outposts and subject countries of the great Turkish empire, M. d’Aramon found he had little to add. He said, as the unloading went on around them, and the Muscat level slowly receded, ‘May I say, Mr Crawford, that I believe you have chosen a career for which you are decidedly suited?’
The unexcited blue gaze widened, sceptically. ‘Merry Report the Vice, court-crier and squire for God’s precious body? It is an appointment I can hold, I’m afraid, only briefly.… I am told there is some unrest in the army, and that is why the Sultan has decided to march south himself?’
‘That is the rumour.’ M. d’Aramon shifted a little in his chair. For the past week, on this score, the Corps Diplomatique had had to exercise considerable tact. ‘The Seraglio, you will understand, is sealed from the world, and very little is heard unless the Grand Seigneur wishes it. But it seems that the army marched south in the late summer under Rustem Pasha, the Grand Vizier, less to attack than to defend the eastern borders against some inroads made by the Shah. On the way they passed through Amasiya, where Prince Mustafa, the Sultan’s eldest son and his heir, rules the region.…’
‘You speak of the son, not of Roxelana, the Sultan’s present wife, but of his first concubine Gulbehar?’
D’Aramon nodded. ‘He is, nevertheless, as you know, the heir. His wife and son are not in the harem but at Bursa, on the other side of the Bosphorus and he himself, until he succeeds his father as Sultan, will live elsewhere and administer the Sultan’s Asian lands. He is, in my belief, a modest and able young man. But——’
‘But this autumn the Sultan, here in Constantinople, found reason to believe that Prince Mustafa and the army were conspiring against him?’
The Baron de Luetz rose; and walking to the door, pulled