Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [210]
They landed. The light Arab horses, trellised with pearl and trailing velvet and tassels, were not easy to collect and control, when oneself in the fanciest costume. But two by two, formalities finished, the procession was formed, and passing the sea gate of Topkapi, the Sultan’s kiosk of marble and crystal, the Fish Gate, the Imperial mill, bakery and hospital set against the outside Seraglio wails, and the broken marble of the older civilization which had shared Seraglio Point, turned its back on the sea; and following the high turreted wall of the palace, climbed the low hill to the summit, where shone the vast golden dome of St Sophia, and the tall, white marble tunnel of the Bab-i-Humayun; the Sublime Porte itself; the Gate to the Royal Seraglio.
Like a carnival party; like a company of playactors, whose painted cloths and sparkling glass jewels were real, thought d’Aramon grimly, the two Ambassadors with their gentlemen and their escort rode between the two lines of white-feathered door guard and into the square quarter-mile of exercise-ground, green with trees and lined with strange irregular buildings, which was the first of the four courts of the Palace. ‘I wish you good fortune,’ said the Baron d’Aramon to his companion. ‘May you return through this gate bearing your son and the child of your friends. You have travelled far for this moment.’
A brief, one-sided smile pulled at the new Ambassador’s mouth. ‘Thank you,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Aussi Dieu aide—perhaps—aux fols et aux enfants.… What are the buildings?’
D’Aramon told him. On the right, the long hospital, with its red tiled roofs, and the low freestone buildings of the main well and waterworks. On the left, the dome of the old Byzantine church of St Irene, once filled with the weapons and armour of Greeks and Crusaders. An arcade and horse-trough, a wood- and tool-yard; and the cupolas of the Mint and of the Pavilion of Goldsmiths and Gemsetters, where worked the shield-makers and cutlers and sword-smiths, the gold-chasers and engravers, the workers in amber and copper and silver, the glovers and upholsterers, the carvers and makers of musical instruments, whose art, like the dials of the spider, clothed and veiled the precincts of mastery.
This was the courtyard of the Janissaries, the children of Hadji Bektash, the first standing army in Europe since the days of the Romans. They stood on either side, rank upon rank of blue robes, unmoving; silent; the bird-of-paradise feathers of ceremony in the copper sockets of each high white felt bonnet, curling and falling knee-length behind. Riding from end to end of that long double column, with the doors of the Sublime Porte closing behind, the Baron de Luetz felt again the fear which never failed to grip him, after all these years, on finding himself inside these high walls: the awe forced on every stranger by the weight of the silence.
It was a court used by many outside the Seraglio: a court of business and training, a place full of affairs, the laden mules passing to and fro between the guard and the buildings, and turbaned men of many races bearing burdens or bent on swift errands. Nevertheless, there was complete silence. A cough could be heard, distantly, in the still, heavy air. The tread of their horses’ feet, as they moved over the flat unpaved dirt and then crossed some broad, cobbled path, formed alternating patterns of tone, and the chime of bridle and bit and the soft tread of their escort echoed back from the buildings. In silence, they crossed the wide court, and in silence halted before the Inner Wail and the true entrance to the Seraglio: the battlemented gatehouse and twin octagonal towers of the Ortokapi; the Gate of Salutation.
Across the First Court, Ambassadors and officials of the Inner Service had the privilege of riding. Within the Ortokapi, none rode but the Sovereign of Sovereigns himself. As their escort, moving silently