Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [245]
Nor to Philippa’s direct mind was it clear how this information could benefit Francis Crawford. No single man, and a foreigner already suspected at that, was going to overthrow the three most powerful people in the Empire next to Suleiman himself with any ease, whatever the proofs. Likelier by far that to keep his love and his pride, the Sultan would declare the proof forged, whatever his private misgivings, and would throw their accusers instead to the lions. It was not her business, however, to say as much to Hepsibah. Since Lymond had asked for it, she passed on as much as she knew; and waited, her stomach turning, for what the rest of the winter would bring.
Of Kuzúm, she now saw much less; and in that, sickeningly, she saw Gabriel’s hand. Once she heard him calling, ‘Are you there, Fippy? Come out to Kuzúm?’ and heard his treble explain, after a space, ‘I need to waiting for Fippy to come out.’ He had run out of the courtyard and up the harem steps to discover her, but when she got there he was gone. The head nurse said he was at his lessons, but she could not discover what lessons she meant. Unless the grovelling ritual whose traces she had seen, for the first time, on the day of the Ambassador’s visit.
When she did see him he looked pale, but although he said little, he sat very close. He had also begun to lean more on Tulip: perhaps, thought Philippa drearily, he felt a child near his own age less likely to betray him. She heard Kuzúm scolding him sometimes, over the wall: That a too much mouthful, Tulip.’ At least, that way, he was keeping his English. She knew the nurses had orders to talk nothing but Turkish to him now. The shepherd clutch thee fast: the wolves are many, said the words of Jelál, ringing all day in her head. O my black lamb, O my black lambkin, heed me!
Then she was summoned to the rooms of the Sultan.
It happened on a Thursday, the day Hepsabah usually came, and worried her at first as she was expecting a message from Lymond. She stared at Kiaya Khátún, her mind busy, and only slowly realized what Kiaya Khátún had in fact said. The rooms of the Sultan.
But the Sultan was now in Aleppo. She opened her mouth, but Kiaya Khátún forestalled her, the dark Greek face placid. ‘You ask yourself, why the Sultan’s apartments? I answer that it is a State ceremony. You are fortunate in being chosen to share it. I have told the Mistress of the Baths and the Mistress of the Wardrobe to prepare you. When they have done we shall see, I trust, the harvest of these our long labours to lead you to ripeness and beauty. When you are ready, they will lead you to the Golden Road and a eunuch will come for you.’
In the baths, although they giggled and shrieked and conjectured, the other girls had no idea what was going to happen. To some of their suggestions she closed her ears, although she made jokes, as best she could, while they sluiced and scrubbed and anointed her; a different scent for each foot of her body. She knew them all now. Only a few were spiteful. Most were cheerful before what they felt somehow must be her good fortune, and only a little envious of the stiff marten trimmed robe they slipped over her head, and the three thousand crowns’ worth of pearls bound in her thick, shining hair. Her pattens were inlaid with mother of pearl and with silver, and her little cap was edged with seed pearls and topped with a worked plaque in silver. She was not given a veil. Then they took her to the Golden Road.
She waited there perhaps ten minutes, her negress smiling behind her. It was narrow and carpeted, and dark in spite of the small silver lamps on the arcaded walls and the most beautiful faience in the world: tomato red, scarlet and coral, thick-laid on a flawless white ground.… Dear Kate, thought Philippa as the smell of mutton reached her, sickening, from the apartments above, I am robed and waiting to be taken to the Sultan