Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
Unable to sleep or eat for frightened excitement, Philippa had counted the hours until today. It had been hardest of all, she found, to act normally with Kuzúm. On her actions today depended his whole life and his future: a future of which he had no conception. For surely, no matter what Gabriel had hinted, this and this only was Lymond’s son? She shut her mind to the other, unthinkable possibility and took in hand, firmly, a wet, loose-lipped yearning to smother the child with treacly emotion. She played with Kuzúm that afternoon; scolded him briskly when he blew his nose with his mouth full of yoghourt, and took him downstairs with the other girls of the harem to see the bears fed.
The elephants were kept at Constantine’s Palace, and the wolves and the lions: the Sultana’s rooms were above the pound at Topkapi, and the Sultana’s sleep must not be disturbed. So there the keeper put the smaller, picturesque animals like lynxes and leopards and ermines in cages; and tethered a brown bear to a stake, with her two cubs humping about her; all upturned toes and high furry bottoms.
Kuzúm loved the bears. He watched them with a fierce adoration: ‘I see two ones. Kuzúm show Fippy where is the bears.… Kuzúm have a see. Now Fippy have a see. Now Fippy lift up me to see all the pussy cats.… Oh, it’s fallened.’
It was a leopard, and it had indeed fallen. Philippa took Kuzúm back to the bears, and said to the keeper, ‘One of your leopards isn’t well.’
The face under the turban was familiar, but he gave her no glance of recognition: only swore under his breath in what she understood to be Urdu, and hurried off to the cage, the chattering girls in their veils following, bright as finches. ‘Is it sick?’ someone asked.
The little mahout answered in Turkish. ‘It is sick, Khátún. It can be healed in the Palace menagerie. I shall take it there later.’ He answered all of their questions, but his gaze, as always, strayed to Kuzúm. With his blue eyes and thick silky cap of bright hair, the little boy in his Turkish jacket and slippers was as sweet as a peach; his swooping voice striving to fasten together difficult words and impossible phrases, his open laughter and quick, warm affection creating a climate of trade winds and sunshine in which they all basked.
His own view of the weather was rather more literal. After he had had his fill of the bears and the ermines, and watched the keeper push meat in to the lynxes, accepting a piece of animal biscuit from the mahout in the bygoing, Kuzúm announced suddenly, ‘It’s very too cold,’ and yawned, his pink skin stretched like a carp’s round the O of his mouth.
‘You’re tired. We’ll go in a moment,’ Philippa said; and, taking off her own heavy lined cloak, wrapped it round the small boy. The young bears, attracted by the trailing thing on the ground, scampered after him and pawed it, dragging it half off his shoulders, and he rocked and sat down with a bump, his legs stuck out before him. The mahout gave him another piece of biscuit and he held it out for the bears to nibble, absently, before cramming the rest unhygienically into his mouth. Philippa didn’t restrain him.
When they came to go, climbing chattering up the stairs and through the series of courts that led them finally back to the harem, Kuzúm had succumbed, and the mahout turned the folds of the mohair more closely around him. Philippa climbed the stairs carefully, carrying her small burden all swathed in her cloak: it was not yet time to return Kuzúm to the head nurse so she turned into her own rooms instead and, laying her burden down, got out one of her books and sat looking at it until the bustle had all died down and the girls had gone off, as she knew they would, for their music.
From this class she was excused. Philippa waited until there was silence, and then, producing a hairpin, crept out into the corridor and proceeded to put into use all poor Hepsibah’s training.
Khourrém’s rooms were quite empty: today was a religious festival and, in the absence of Suleiman, his wife was at St Sophia, she