Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [196]
‘Nulla apud Turcas esse diversoria … Yes, I know,’ said Crawford mildly. They were the first words he had spoken for some time. He had not, M. d’Aramon noted, indulged overmuch in the caviare, although he had taken a little more wine than was his usual remarkably spare habit. A trembling flicker of sapphire blue flame from the ring on the other man’s hand, lying still by his goblet, drew the Baron’s attention, just as Crawford added, in the same breath, ‘I wonder … are there horses one might hire to the Embassy?’
‘My dear sir!’ Instant solicitude; but beneath it, an undeniably selfish shadow of pleasure. Exhausted. And he could give him … what? Twenty years? But it was, of course, a very steep climb back to the hilltop at Pera.
M. d’Aramon obtained the horses, and with his Janissaries walking behind, returned home with the new Ambassador who smiled, but did not again speak until, dismounting in the Embassy courtyard, they walked indoors together. There he turned, and holding out his hand to M. d’Aramon said, ‘Will you forgive me? As Abraham entertained the angels with hearth-cakes, you have entertained me, and I am deeply indebted. It is to my shame that I have not your energy.’
His voice was steady and the hand he offered was cool. But from the roots of his damp yellow hair, all Crawford’s skin, d’Aramon saw with surprise, was sparkling with sweat.
He said something, he remembered, and stood watching as the new Ambassador, withdrawing his hand, smiled and turned into his own private chamber. Later, d’Aramon was thinking about it again, in his own study, when the fat Swiss steward scratched on the door and then entered.
He brought the explanation for this curious behaviour, quite simply, with his apologies.
‘M. le Comte has recently had an infection of the shoulder, Your Excellency, which troubles him if he does not have a sufficiency of rest. He would not himself venture to upset your programme, but if you would be so kind as to ensure that he has an opportunity to dine here at the Embassy each day, followed by an hour, no more, in which to repose …’
‘But of course,’ said M. d’Aramon, roused to a lively anxiety. ‘I did not know. He did not, of course, mention it. I trust no harm … I hope,’ said M. d’Aramon hurriedly, as another thought struck him, ‘that Tuesday’s ceremony will not be too much for him?’
‘Thank you, sir. It is kind of you, sir. You may rest perfectly assured,’ said Master Zitwitz with gentle and absolute confidence, ‘that His Excellency will attend Tuesday’s ceremony with no difficulty whatsoever.’
19
Chios and Constantinople
About half-way between Aleppo and Chios, it came to Jerott Blyth, like Achillini discerning the bile duct, that he hated ichneumons.
Afterwards, with the mountains, the steppes, the gorges behind him; having lived through the sleepless days in the stifling heat of the tents and passed the labouring nights in the saddle of his small Turkish horse, which could walk or gallop but was unable to trot, or on the jolting back of one of the two hundred camels in their long caravan, Jerott was prepared to admit that for many reasons that long journey, six weeks in all, between Aleppo and Constantinople was one of the worst in his life.
Through all the misery of mosquitoes and dust-storms, of stale meat and sour milk and brackish water, through the perpetual cries of the camel-men; the plodding clank of the bells, the barking of the leashed dogs in the casals they passed; the rauccous groups of itinerant merchants forming and reforming among the riders, inquisitive, insistent; stinking, some of them, worse than their camels, there rode at his side Pierre Gilles discoursing in Latin on the glories of Constantinople (forma illius est triangula), and of the ancient city which battle and fire had reduced to ruins