Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [280]
On the carpet below the dais there were two velvet cushions, widely spaced; and on these, by her orders it seemed, Gabriel and Lymond both knelt in silence. In silence also, Jerott with Archie and Míkál were pushed into line a little behind the two cushions, the mutes at the back. Then, with a leap of his pulses, Jerott saw Marthe come in unveiled, her bright hair bound in a fillet, her brows raised; her walk graceful and careless, self-possessed and touched with contempt. He saw, as she walked, the blue gaze, without cordiality, find Lymond and stare at him, and Lymond’s eyes in turn lift to meet hers, of identical colour. To Jerott’s breathless fancy, a challenge, or something near it, for a moment seemed to pass from one to the other. Then Marthe was past, without glancing at Jerott, and had joined the black eunuch standing beside the Kislar Agha, to one side of the throne.
She was followed by another girl, whom Jerott did not at first notice; and then, startled, identified. It was Philippa Somerville, her glossy brown hair swept back from her high schoolgirl’s brow to lie on her shoulders; her body slender under thick tawny silk, its new softness overlaid by a rope of gold and white jade, clasped with an infant tortoiseshell, high on her shoulder. It was indeed Philippa, although she walked as Jerott had seen women walk from the bathhouse with their servants, slim and straight as an elif. But the brown eyes under the thin dark brows were the same, anxiously searching; lighting with a small, relieved smile first on Lymond, then on Archie and himself; with puzzlement and a little hauteur on Míkál. Then they swept on, still searching, Jerott did not know for what, until he saw, on the big dais, a negress sitting, a child by her side.
It was Khaireddin, a fixed smile on his white, old man’s face: the face Jerott had seen twice before; in the shed of the silk merchant of Mehedia and not long ago, playing with shells on a carpet while Francis Crawford lay, soft-voiced and motionless, trying to undo the damage which Gabriel had done.
Philippa’s eyes fell on the child as a man groping in water might lift, flinching, what he had found. She stood by the Kislar Agha, her gaze on the boy, and as he watched, Jerott saw her lips open and then shut tight, her eyes very bright. She was still standing like that when the second child came in and was led to sit by the negress’s other side. A round-faced boy, sturdily built, with a cap of bright yellow hair, whom he had not seen before. Unlike the other child he looked round at once, complete consternation printed on his plump face, saw Philippa, and screamed ‘Fippy!’ at the top of his voice.
The negress gave him a small slap and he looked at her, his face crumpled, and then wriggled close and sat still. Philippa smiled at him, and then at the other child, and Jerott, looking at Lymond’s impassive face, thought, My God: it’s a bloody crèche … the ultimate humiliation. The last hand-to-hand light with this man who can win empires with abominations and rot them with evil, all stickied over by babies in napkins. The last tomb, whoever should occupy it, furnished brightly with ridicule.
Then the doors closed. Roxelana Sultán made a slight movement, and, at a sign from the Kislar Agha, both Gabriel and Lymond rose to their feet. For a moment the Sultana studied them without speaking. Then she addressed them in Turkish, lapidary and precise.
‘You are assembled here because it seemed to us that the good name of the State and the security of the Ottoman peoples are touched by the matters opened in the Divan Court this morning, and that the rest of the hearing should therefore be held and concluded in private.’
She paused. No one spoke. No one asked how she knew what had passed in her absence in the Divan Court: and although Philippa looked at Lymond he did not answer her glance. Roxelana continued, her voice firm behind the light veil. ‘One of you has been accused of spreading lies which stain the honour