Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [219]
‘It is a matter of deep regret that I cannot kill you at this moment,’ said Lymond gently. ‘Because there are three children at the adventure of God I cannot address you either, as I should prefer. But I promise you failure. Whatever happens, I shall take the children and free them.’
Gabriel smiled. ‘Believe it if you must. You cannot alter what is in store, or avoid the long appointment with pain which awaits you. My other friends will take heed from your … infelicity.… I bid you goodbye.’
For a moment longer, encased like chrysalids in the plate-armour of ceremony, the two men faced each other in silence, and M. d’Aramon, watching apprehensively from the door, felt the tension already within the Divan tighten to a point beyond sound.
He did not know that for one man at least the room had become filled with the scents of a night garden in Algiers; choked and overlaid with the stench of a hideous burning. He did not know that, in spite of what Lymond had said, Gabriel was at that moment all but a dead man, and the lives of Philippa Somerville and two unknown children all but destroyed. But he saw Francis Crawford’s hands spreadeagled suddenly, hard at his sides; and something inspired M. d’Aramon to say quickly, ‘M. l’Ambassadeur! We must leave.’
Then Lymond turned abruptly from Jubrael Pasha and, without speaking, walked through the door of the Divan and joined the procession outside.
It was the last fine day of that autumn. Glaring high from a lucid blue sky, the sun struck down from the studded rows of lead domes and lanced into the eye from the gold leaf and copper enriching the courtyard, and the silver-tipped staffs and the clothes of the Janissaries, the Kapici and Chiausi in their unmoving ranks. The silence was complete.
Gold danced in the shadows of Bab-i-Sa’adet, the Gate of Felicity, as the French Ambassador’s train approached it through one of the flanking colonnades of verd-antique pillars. Below the high, dazzling soffit of its canopy a deep carpet had been laid before the innermost gate: the gate through which entry was forbidden to all but Suleiman Khan the Magnificent and the chosen members of the Inner Household and those whom, as today, he might receive in private audience in the Arzodasi, the Throne Room just inside its gates. Beyond that was the unknown: the state apartments, the harem, the quarters of the eunuchs and the little, painted pages locked behind the three gates of the outer courts, and the ranks of Spahi and Janissary and all the public officialdom of the empire.
White eunuchs guarded the door: tall men of many races robed in gamboge and sable, stark and pure in their turbans as a cliff-face of gannets. Between them stood the Kapi Agha, the Chief White Eunuch and High Chamberlain, the head of the Third Court of the Seraglio. He bowed, hand on breast: once to the new Ambassador and once to the old; and then, turning, faced the high portico, wrought in panels of marble and wreathed with the golden calligraphy of the Qur’ân, which contained the Gate of Felicity: the great double-leafed doors of Bab-i-Sa’adet. He raised his hand, walking forward, his train of vermilion velvet brushing the carpet. And as Francis Crawford moved forward behind him, the doors opened slowly.
They opened on flowers and birdsong: on a dazzle of white and gilt marble set in willows and cypress and boxtrees; on galleried walls of marthe and turquoise blue porcelain whose gilded Greek pillars were veiled in the spray of the fountains spaced down the long, sloping courtyard. Underfoot, the carpet continued