Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
‘What is it?’ said Philippa, tears pouring out of her eyes, as she lay at length, the sleeping child in her arms, under Archie’s clean bit of straw.
‘It’s elephant muck,’ said Archie. ‘You get a fair price for that. Anywhere in the world. You’d be surprised at the demand.’
‘Oh, Archie: I’m sure I should,’ said Philippa. ‘I’m not surprised you sell it, either. Archie, what a blessing Kuzúm’s asleep.…’
She lay, her cheek in the straw and her arms round the small sturdy body of Kuzúm, and heard the hollow roll of the wheels as they passed through the Edirne Gate and out of Stamboul into the green fields of Thrace.
Because of the forthcoming Festival the crowd round the blind story-teller was small that afternoon in the Hippodrome and he was able to speak to everyone in the way they liked best; inviting their comment on his stories and talking gravely or lightly, as the mood took his audience. A smaller boy than usual brought round the bowl: Ishiq, he explained, had been called to a sick brother. If the Meddáh himself missed a still smaller child, who used to stand outside the Beyazit Mosque, his hand on his knee, no one could have guessed.
He stayed a long time, and his friends were bidding him rise to warm himself at their brazier and eat at their tables when Ishiq skipped lightly in and, taking the bowl, murmured in the blind Meddáh’s ear. The story-teller smiled, and turning to the murmur of voices said, ‘It is well. His brother is better: thou seest him shaking his shoulder-joints? Praise be to Allah, the Knower of Subtleties. May Allah the Bestower of Sustenance walk with thee.’ Then, Ishiq holding his arm, Lymond rose, and walked for the last time in the robes of the story-teller to the house of Míkál.
He changed as he listened to Ishiq’s long story, peeling off the coarse robes of the Meddáh, the wig and bandage and beard already dropped on the floor. Míkál, sitting crosslegged and silent, said nothing, but watched the way he moved; the unhurried fingers; the intent, constrained profile as Ishiq told how the child Khaireddin, safe in his cage, had been brought out of the city and taken well to the west before being placed, as arranged, in the big barn of a farmer who was anxious for money and indifferent about his method of getting it. There one of the Geomalers was awaiting him: a familiar face whom he would trust. Then, joined by Philippa, Kuzúm and Archie, they would continue their journey.
‘And what of Philippa Khátún?’ Lymond said. He had dressed European-style in dark tunic and hose, with fine Turkish buskins laced on for quietness and speed. Over a chest lay the loose, hooded surcoat he would wear in the street, and the staff, to account for his stooping.
‘She is safe,’ Ishiq said. ‘And the child.’ Again, he recounted the story, and, listening, Lymond ran his hands over his disordered hair and, bending, began transferring possessions quickly and deftly from one robe to the other. One supposed, thought Míkál, that he had spent at least some hours of tension, telling his tales and awaiting this news. But it might have been of no moment at all.
Míkál said softly, as the account came to an end, ‘So you have achieved all you promised. The girl Philippa and both children are free.’
‘They should be,’ said Lymond. His pallor had become greater in these last weeks and was now marked: in it, his eyes now appeared of a deeper and more brilliant blue, their lids architectural in a spare structure of bone.
Old in the ways of the drug, Míkál had watched this man fighting it. Since he could order the measure for himself Lymond was no longer vulnerable to the violent changes in mood and in temper which had made him a tormenting companion ever since Malta. Under a high, steady intake of opium he was keyed up to a level of intense nervous activity: as capable of quick action and imaginative thinking as he had ever been: perhaps more so; and able, if he were called on, to sustain pain or intolerable effort without evident difficulty. It was the great virtue of the drug and,