Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [224]
The Gates of the Ortokapi opened, and closed.
Outside were their horses; the bright-harnessed mares from the Sultan, held ready for mounting, and the vast horse-parade of the Janissaries with company after company drawn up, their salute like a wave of the sea. The Sublime Porte, the great doors to the Topkapi Seraglio, opened, and closed, and the Ambassador of France, his head high, his eyes seeing little, rode out into the dust and the stench and the noise of Constantinople.
21
Constantinople: The Meddah
Many years later, understanding it all, the Baron de Luetz, who survived, used to tell how that day they left the Sublime Porte to the measure of the Chorea Machabaeorum, the Danse Macabre, the Danza General de los Muertos. They stepped from the high throne of Suleiman the Magnificent, and under the dark aegis of Gabriel.
Lymond knew it. He acted through the whole elegant masquerade: rode to the shores of the Golden Horn and, taking his leave of his escort, crossed it and remounting climbed the packed streets to the Embassy with metallic precision: careless of the amazed and whispering tongues and the curious glances from those in his train. As they rode side by side through the shops and buildings of Pera, d’Aramon, unable further to govern his temper, burst into low speech. ‘I thought you a man of honour, professing to hold me in friendship. You told me you had an honourable petition to present. I have heard you present a tissue of lies, prostituting the name of France to gain your own ends. I cannot hope that you have considered the figure I shall cut, returning home after a lifetime of service, of knotting this friendship between Turkey and France. I have stood by today and seen a rogue snap it asunder.’
Lymond’s face remained schooled to a hard kind of patience. He said, ‘France will disown me: you will not suffer. Give me a few days only, until I have the Sultan’s final reply. Then you may repudiate me.’
The crowd pressed in. The Baron de Luetz smiled and nodded, his face livid, and a moment later went on, in the same low, sharpened tone, ‘You already have his reply. He has refused.’
‘I have his public reply. He is concerned to keep his new Vizier’s loyalty, and less to fulfil a problematical demand from the French. I have offered him another way, if he esteems it at all worth the trouble.’
How much had those diamonds been worth, in the casket sent to Roxelana Sultán? With justice the Sultan might, if he chose, tell his Vizier that Roxelana, pleased by the jewels, had let it be known that she wished to keep them, and to return the boy and the maiden instead. He might even claim, if he wished, that his wife had ordered their release without his, Suleiman’s, knowledge. The Baron de Luetz said, harshly, ‘You plot well. Perhaps you will even succeed, with so many innocents dragged in to your aid.’
Lymond turned in the saddle. Light on the reins, his jewelled gloves were held low and half-curled before him. The snowy fields of his ermine, spread round him fold upon fold, were spiky with damp; and sweat misted all the spare planes of his skin. He said—and there was savagery in the soft voice—‘The Devil is Graham Malett’s already. Who is left, their riper age rotten in all damnations, but the innocent?’
The blood came coursing down the hill towards them just after that: smooth as rosewood in the white dust. Between the doorposts, on the Embassy’s high wrought-iron gates, they found the dismembered bodies of the Ambassador’s porters, carved hot like young lamb, and spitted there among the dark flowers.
It was the beginning: the first of the unholy incidents which none could explain: for which no culprit could be found, although the Sublime Porte, expressing unqualified horror, tripled the Embassy’s cordon of Janissaries and agreed by return to Lymond’s formal request that all his staff might henceforth carry weapons.
Weapons did not save those who died when the well water was poisoned; when a wall collapsed in the yard of the kitchen boys; when a carter going for hay was half flayed and blinded,