Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [259]
She left shortly after, having exchanged no more with Philippa than that. The Chiausi escorting her were waiting at the door of the selamlik and walked with her up the slope of the third court, the grey light cold on their silver-tipped staffs. Straight and elegant in her stiff Turkish over-robe, a veil over her hair, Marthe this time had relaxed infinitesimally; her blue eyes observing in silence the marbles and gold and the deep-coloured tiles within the slim colonnades, and the square wrought shell of the Throne Room before the Gate of Felicity.
The Gate opened slowly, the doorkeepers standing impassive before it, their white plumes lifting and flickering in the sharp little wind. Within the porch stood a line of tall men, dressed not as Chiausi or Janissaries, but in elaborate coats, with tall hats of violet velvet. Beside her, Marthe’s escort had halted. She glanced at them, her heart thudding suddenly; and then took a step forward alone, her head high.
No one moved. She stopped again, and in a firm voice addressed them in Turkish. They smiled and nodded, variously, in return, standing immovable from wall to wall of the porch, but none of them spoke, except with his fingers. Then, still smiling, they walked forward and began to surround her, edging her away from the wide golden gateway and back into the innermost garden. She turned then, quickly, to speak to her escort but they had gone silently, disappearing between the green pillars; and they did not turn back although she called sharply before trying again, her voice cutting, to order the men in her way to stand back.
They heard, she thought, and understood probably; but they did nothing to help her, but merely stood smiling around her, while the Gate of Felicity closed. Then, gently, they gripped her by the arms and guided her back into the secret, innermost court of the Seraglio.
Marthe was in the hands of the mutes.
24
Constantinople: The House of Jubrael Pasha
The Meddáh that day was in the Hippodrome, the ruins of the great coursing-ground with its pillaged horseshoe of arcades high above the Marmara Sea, where once lions fought and chariots raced for the Byzantine emperors and their courts. Ottoman palaces now had encroached on its great thirteen-hundred-foot spread; its stones had been used for Suleiman’s splendid new khan, and its marble pillars for Suleiman’s mosque. Long ago, the old statues from Greece and from Rome had been thrown down or stolen: Castor and Pollux; Hercules in bronze by Lymachus. The chariot of Lysippus with its four golden horses had stood on the Imperial Box until the fourth crusade, when the Venetians had taken and placed it in their own church of St Mark’s.
Pillars still remained, of coloured marble, upholding the galleries beneath which were the cages and chambers and storehouses; and at the other end, near St Sophia, some tiered buildings and remains of wide shallow steps. In the centre, in a straggling line, there remained also what was left of the treasures brought to Byzantium from Greece and Asia Minor, and all over the civilized world. The obelisk from Karnak, set up by Theodosius on its plinth of deep bas-relief, was now nearly three thousand years old; its hieroglyphics still sharp and clear. Near it, the Column of Constantine still showed the marks where its plates of gilt bronze had been pinned, and between them, twenty feet high, were the three coiled bronze snakes from the Temple of Delphi, whose heads had once held the great golden tripod and vase before the shrine two thousand years earlier. A century before, on another site, water, wine and milk had flowed from the three serpent heads which now gaped at the winter skies, broken and dry. Now Suleiman used the waste ground between for sports and for festivals, and the Janissaries practised their archery and rode fast, dangerous games of Djirit among its broken pillars and fragmented marble, where flocks of goats