Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [244]
‘And partly opium?’ said Jerott.
For a moment Lymond thought, studying him. Then he said, ‘I think you should try to put that out of your mind. You will see me taking it quite often. So long as I do take it you will not, I think, notice much difference. I am not using it to escape my responsibilities, if that was what mainly exercised you. But I should be indebted if you would keep what you know of it meantime to yourself. It will, I suppose, be all too obvious one day, but there is work to do first. Archie is here, and will help.’
‘What can I do?’ Jerott said.
Lymond changed his position, with care, and clasped his hands round his knees. ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked.
‘Of course. You don’t suppose you can do it on your own?’ said Jerott. ‘What can I do?’
Lymond grinned. ‘When the clay for thee was kneaded, as they say,’ he remarked, ‘they forgot to put in common sense. You may sit there while they bring something to drink. Then you may listen.’
Unsuspected, Jerott left half an hour later, to join his Janissary and make his staid journey home. Back in the house by the aqueduct Lymond walked slowly through to his chamber, and opening the shutters, stood there for a long time looking at nothing, until he found Ishiq’s face at his elbow.
‘And in the night, give Him glory too, and at the setting of the stars,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You don’t understand me, but I am only, like Khaireddin, saying goodnight to the dark.’
Shortly before this, Philippa Somerville was debarred from the Sultana’s rooms.
They had discovered, she supposed, that the Pearl of Fortune was none other than the English girl for whose return the French Ambassador had petitioned. A week or two earlier, and it might have mattered, but by then she had already begun taking lessons, in the harem, from Hepsibah the Jewess. She had learned how to dress her hair with jewels and ribbons, unaided: how to trim her nails so that they grew oval and shapely. She learned to embroider, picking up irregular threads in a weave as fine as the eye could distinguish, and marshalling them into a hazy garland of violets and peonies, each stitch even; each design impeccable inside and out. She embroidered slippers for Kuzúm, and veils whose edges were fronded with carnations and jasmine, cut out and skilfully sewn. She learned how to pick a lock with a hairpin, and how to melt off a seal.
Philippa had quite a lot of news, in those early days, to pass on through Hepsibah to Francis Crawford. There were letters, if you knew where to look for them, from Gabriel to Roxelana Sultán, and from Rustem Pasha, the Grand Vizier with the army. There were snatches of talk overheard between Gabriel and Roxelana. There was evidence, finally, incontrovertible, that the supposed sedition of the Prince Mustafa against his father and his father’s Grand Vizier had been something fabricated by Rustem Pasha, by Gabriel and by Roxelana, the mother of the Sultan’s next heir. And that the chain of events which led to the death of Mustafa at the hands of the Sultan was due to them also.
At home in Flaw Valleys, Philippa had seen plenty of violence: had watched Flaw Valleys overrun by its enemies, and her father ride out again and again to come back with half of his company: the rest dead men tied to their saddles. Intrigue and sudden death had been the stuff of government in her country as long as she could remember. But this was the first time Philippa herself had brushed shoulders with it: had been forced to take it by the diseased hand and use it for her own ends.
She was frightened. Dealing with Hepsibah she used a bright, matter-of-fact tone which covered her nervousness. She was shocked by the Jewess’s tranquillity. She knew—probably everyone knew—that in order to make himself Sultan, Suleiman’s father had strangled two brothers and five of his nephews.