Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [231]
He was too shocked even to cry properly. He lay like a waterless flower in the cot, blood streaking his white linen wrappings, and sobbed soundlessly in a high, rushing alto; his eyes unseeing, his round fists thrust on his chest. When Philippa touched him, choking, he went rigid; when she spoke to him, he paid no attention. She had failed him, she understood. With loving reassurances she had coaxed him to live among strangers, and the strangers had turned on him, and she had not come. It had happened before, although she was not to know that, and neither did Kuzúm remember his branding.
But something of the terror of it must have remained, for although the weals were light and healed fairly quickly, he became very quiet and balky to feed: sitting in round-eyed defiance with a mouthful of food, deaf to persuasion and orders, although if they pressed him too far, he would begin to tremble, and Philippa made them stop. You could not explain, in another language, that he was summoning all his courage to test the boundaries of permitted behaviour, beyond which he now knew it to be so terrible to trespass. He had been shouted at and attacked: he did not know why. How was he to know when it might happen again?
Philippa saw his strained face looking after her each day when she had to go, and ached because he did not call her back. He loved her, but she had not saved him before. How should he look to her to save him again?
Evangelista Donati had been so confident. Once within the Seraglio, she had said, who can hurt you or the child? Yet Graham Malett, their prime enemy, was here, in power, and claiming the child as his own. And the Sultan was leaving, they said.
Philippa knew, when she saw Gabriel’s golden figure from the Divan window, that whatever demands France might make, she and Kuzúm would never be freed. But it was worse still than that. Through them, she now saw quite clearly, the final conflict with Lymond would be forced to its climax. The ridiculous present the Embassy had brought, the horological spinet, had been wheeled into Khourrém’s rooms, and no doubt she, Philippa, would be expected to play it. Fear and apprehension, daily occupying the pit of her stomach, had made her in other ways grimly determined. She took a long time to approach the Sultana’s private apartments, and a long time to find her way back. She sometimes took a long time even to turn the handle of the door: particularly if the visitor was Gabriel.
After all, she understood very little Turkish, and certainly not Turkish spoken softly and fast, without an interpreter. Even if she were seen, none would concern themselves. From taciturn, Philippa turned very gay among the other girls, though to herself she was capable of long stretches of silent communing. Then came the day when she was asked to perform on the spinet, and she had her first close inspection of the ungainly thing: a chest of drawers topped by a campanile.
To her relief, the frenzy of bells and of puppetry stilled as she drew out the keyboard. It at least was fashioned properly: the naturals formed of ebony had arcaded ends; the accidentals had slips of ivory. Flowers, in leather and ivory, were set into the soundboard. Inside the drop front was pasted a small oblong card, unseen until the drawer was opened. On it, someone had written in English, I have tuned this myself. C. de L. & S. The script was level and small, and extraordinarily clear. She had never seen it before.
With hands which shook very slightly, Philippa ran her thin, flat-padded fingers over the keys. The quilling, she realized at once, was very light indeed; the touch of the plectra gave a soft bright tone which ran like spray under the hand—all except … there. Pausing, Philippa played it again, and then continued, launching into the piece she had chosen, while she thought. At the