Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [262]
The carpet-dealer called late that afternoon at the house of Názik, the nightingale-merchant, and tramped in without knocking to pick up the carpet he had bought earlier in the day.
Názik was busy and short-tempered, and the interruption was unwelcome. At the same time the dealer, who was new to him and most likely to his job, had offered him four times what he had paid for a Persian prayer-rug, already a little threadbare, under the impression that it was a good deal more important than Názik knew it to be.
It was a bargain not to be missed. On the other hand, the cage-maker at long last had sent round his man with the two cages Názik had long coveted, and he had just unwrapped the first to find that the door was weak in its hinges. It was in other respects so splendid: so ideal, one would say, for Khaireddin, for example, that Názik could have wept. He caressed the ebony base, inset with ivory and mother of pearl and small simply cut jewels, and hung with tassels of silver and scarlet, all the time he was shouting at the cage-maker’s man, who insisted, wailing, that all cage-doors behaved so.
It was no use. Clearly the cage was unsafe. He had just ordered the man to cover up the warped thing and take it out of his sight when he had to go and deal with the carpet. When he came back, soothed by the sight and feel of shivering aspers, it was to find the second cage standing in all its glory, even more fine than the first. They haggled for a long time over the price, and then at the last moment Názik balked at handing over the money, and told the man that he would call at the cage-maker’s and pay it. They were in the middle of a second argument over whether or not the cage could be left, if unpaid for, when Názik’s assistant ran in to say that the boy Khaireddin had gone. And that, as Názik well knew, meant death. Then Názik remembered the carpet-dealer.
They followed the tracks of the cart, running, through the uneven streets, shouting questions as they went to passers-by who stared and called back. The dealer had talked of leaving for Adrianople, and in fact had started towards the Adrianople gate, before doubling back and through a network of streets which led his pursuers, slowly and surely, towards the Golden Horn and its shipping.
They found the cart, in the end, with all its piled carpets standing alone on the landing-stage with its mule sniffing at fish-heads: the swarm of small boys who had just reached it and were pulling off the top heavy roll jumped down and scattered at Názik’s breathless approach. It was his carpet they had partly dismantled, and inside was Khaireddin’s small cap; but no other sign of the boy or the dealer at all.
They searched the waterside till darkness, with the help of those silent men who, day in and day out, had watched every move by the child. Finally, whimpering, Názik went back to his nightingales and began to pack, hurriedly. Míkál, who had come over to buy a few hours of Khaireddin’s time, stayed to comfort him; and also to make quite sure that it occurred to no one at all to follow the cage-maker’s mule, plodding out of the city gate and along the road to the west with a warped silver cage wrapped in cotton and strapped to its pannier.
In Topkapi, Philippa also was following instructions. That they had come in the first place through Marthe had been an astonishment from which she had not yet recovered. But then, as she wisely concluded, Marthe’s relations with Lymond might well have undergone quite a change in all the months since last she had seen them together. Marthe’s feelings towards herself were still clearly cool. Philippa had watched her leave the selamlik with something very like panic, but she was used to overcoming that particular impulse. It did not cross her mind that Marthe had not immediately