Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
So music to this man was a weight or a counter-weight, like those working the delicate wheels of Gaultier’s automata. It would be interesting to know, thought Gaultier, what change of balance had created the need for it now.
Then they were summoned to return to the vestibule, where the inner gates, the gates of the Court of the Divan, now stood fully open.
They opened on a wide-eaved canopy, upheld by ten marble columns with copper chapters and bases, and lined with a ceiling of Persian work, panelled gold upon turquoise, whose shape and colours were repeated in the tessellated ground at their feet. The arcade of which this was part surrounded the four sides of a courtyard smaller than the one they had passed: a garden filled with fountains and small, blowing willow trees, and lawns edged with box and the tall black ovals of cypresses.
The sun had come out, filling the court with sharp greens and blue shadows; striking gold from the stalked domes of the kitchens behind the long gallery which closed the right side of the garden, and from the Treasury domes on the left, and from the single cupola, far in the distance, of the gate to the third and forbidden court: the Gate of Felicity.
To the left, far ahead, stood the low, arcaded pavilion of the Council Chamber which was known as the Divan, with its four-sided tower and tall spire, crowned with the flashing gold crescent which could be seen over all Topkapi. Today, the gazelles which sometimes grazed on the sunny slope of the garden had gone. Instead, still as a Persian miniature, Kapici and Janissaries, in patterned rows of long robes and bright sashes and unstirring plumes, lined the wide path to the Divan and stood guarding each gate.
Led by the Bostanji Bashi, Lymond stepped from the blue and gold of the vestibule into the sunshine and, followed by the severe column of his suite, walked down the patterned path and between the slender pillars and under the wide gold-latticed canopy of the Divan.
There, the door of the first chamber was open, its green velvet hangings held back by a pair of negro child pages in turban, trousers and slippers. Inside, the Baron de Luetz glimpsed the stirring of jewels and bright silks of the Divan’s highest officers, standing round the walls of the room to receive them. On the far wall, lit by a diffusion of sunlight, there was a gleam from the flowered Iznik tiling with which the room was set, joined and edged with wrought gold, and the deep crimson and green of the silk rugs on the floor and behind the Vizier’s throne, opposite. The Bostanji Bashi, turning, bowed and waved Lymond in.
So, robed and jewelled in blue velvet and silver, and followed by his page and the person and page of M. d’Aramon, Francis Crawford entered the Hall of the Divan, and, stepping upon the deep carpet, faced the throne of the Vizier.
‘Welcome,’ Gabriel said.
Philippa saw it happen. Because no prayers or promises would move the black slaves or the eunuchs or even, in despair, Kiaya Khátún to let her view, from whatever thrice-guarded vantage, the reception of the new French Ambassador, she had taken her books and her papers and marched off, changing to a graceful prowl as she remembered, to bury her hopes and excitement in a course of philology, followed by the works of Abd-ul-Baki, the Sultan and Khan of lyric verse, somewhat spoiled by being translated, for her benefit only, into the hybrid mixture of Mediterranean languages the girls all called Frankish.
By pure accident she was seen by Roxelana Sultán, who had formed a liking for her, and who required, for that moment, a feminine escort who could not speak Turkish. She talked briefly to Philippa’s eunuch, and, dismissing both him and her servant, signed to the Pearl of Fortune