Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [234]
It was raining. Unlike the principal streets, this was nothing more than rubble and mud, so narrow that the overhung storeys almost met crooked window to window, and the wet had hardly laid the stink of turned fat and cabbage heads rotting. He stopped where he had been told.
It did not look like the house of a wealthy man. Ishiq hesitated; but his arm ached, and the Meddáh, dragging, felt the threshold with his stick and leaned on it, as on a crutch. Then the door opened and the man who had spoken to them in the garden appeared, smiling, and beckoned them in.
It was strange inside. The house was crowded with people. Two playing chess on a painted cloth looked up and smiled, and a man, naked but for a wolfskin, turned round, a sheep’s leg-bone held against his ridged brow and snapped it, throwing the pieces away, before picking up an ox’s chest-bone and doing the same thing, absently, on his elbow. Another man, in a corner, was stringing a bow, humming. Ishiq, lagging, turned to see his guide ahead turning and beckoning, and taking a fresh grip of his master, he pulled him doggedly on.
The next room was a bedchamber, the mattresses already lying unrolled, with the quiet man standing beside them. ‘He is unwell, your master?’ he said gently to Ishiq. ‘Perhaps he should sleep. Or are you hungry? When have you eaten?’
‘Not since morning,’ said Ishiq. ‘But the Meddáh has not eaten for more than a day. He feels no hunger.’
‘He should eat,’ said the stranger. ‘Wait. Come with me to the kitchen. We shall let him repose while I send for some food I know will please him. Then you will both sleep.’
He was kind, and courteous. Ishiq went to the kitchen, where he was made much of by the old woman there; and when he went back to the bedchamber it seemed that the Meddáh had already eaten and was sleeping. Assured that his master was well, Ishiq curled up and slept.
He did not know, some little time later, that the kind stranger knelt down beside him and after listening a moment said, ‘He is asleep. He will stay so for a while. Tell him to come in.’
He did not see the curtain move and a second man enter, clean and sweet-smelling and clothed all in silk. Or had he been awake he would have seen him move over to the other occupied rug and kneel by the still, blindfolded face of the Meddáh, upturned and silent in sleep.
For a moment the man in silk watched him. Then he stretched out a long, graceful hand, and turning back the worn fur of the collar, began to slip from the story-teller’s shoulders the folds of stiff, heavy robe, pulling it little by little from under him until he lay revealed in pale, soft lawn and close-fitting breeches, his arms lying still at his sides.
The man in silk smiled, and from the other side of the bed, the quiet man who had acted as guide caught the smile and returned it. Then the comely man lifted his hands, and running them up the sleeping man’s face, with one movement smoothed away the grey wig, and pulled the black scarf from over his eyes. Underneath, the sleeper’s hair was not grey, but fair and shining and dark-edged with sweat. And the eyes below the bandage were not blind, but half-waking and blue.
‘Sweet singer,’ said the man in silk gently. O bird of the dawn. Learn love from the Moth, who yielded up its life in the flame without protest. The footprints of the dog are like roses. What, then, are thine, coming to me?’
The sick blue eyes closed. ‘Míkál,’ said the Meddáh, his voice almost soundless.
‘Yes, Efendi,’ said the musical voice. ‘And this is Murad, my friend. Thou hast no money?’
And the Meddáh, who was young and not old, and dressed in European shirt and trunk hose and whose name was Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, opened his eyes and spoke, in the spent voice which was not a pretence. ‘You gave me something to take, a while ago. What was it?’
Míkál gazed at him; the beautiful boy whom he had last seen long ago at Thessalonika. ‘That which would ease thee. Hast thou no gold, that thou couldst not buy it thyself?’
‘I have money. What was it?’
For a moment longer, Míkál looked