Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [281]
Listening to the golden, persuasive voice, Jerott was carried a long way back: to a loch-side in Scotland, to a cathedral in Edinburgh, where the same beautiful cadences had spread falsehood and havoc through a small nation, until before the altar at St Giles it had come to a finish. This time Graham Malett fought under a handicap: he could not call on Míkál and dared not cite, as he had expected, Míkál’s allies and friends with whom to bolster his story.
But he had other suborned witnesses: men who had heard Francis Crawford as Meddáh maligning Khourrém and Rustem Pasha, and stirring men’s hearts to rebellion; those to whom the Jewess Hepsibah had confessed the Meddáh’s command that all to the discredit of Khourrém should be sought out and, if need be, manufactured.
It was Philippa, then, no longer stricken by ceremony, and used to the ways of the court, who moved quickly round to the throne and bending, in a flutter of robes to kiss Roxelana’s foot, said swiftly, ‘Princess, may I speak? This is an untruth. The Jewess Hepsibah had been warned of a plot against you by Jubrael Pasha your Vizier, and how he had invented falsehoods in his secret writings to you, the better to colour it. Punish me if you must, for I confess I have opened your secret places, and read what is within. But this was done for you, not against you.’
The veil over Roxelana’s face told nothing, but the voice was even and cold. ‘Explain then,’ said the Sultana, ‘the fluency thy tongue now commands in my language, so recently gained?’
Philippa had not risen. She said, her brow on the floor, ‘I believed that in this way I might obtain freer access to Your Grace’s apartments. Forgive me.’
‘It is the word of a lying English infidel against Hepsibah’s dying confession,’ said Gabriel. ‘If what the girl claims was in fact true, why should she run away? Why not stay and claim the rewards of her faithful care for the Sultana’s honour?’
‘May I answer that?’ said Lymond’s voice pleasantly. Philippa rose and stepped back, her aching head bent; while Lymond went on. ‘She was taken away, with the child, to remove her from Jubrael’s vengeance. Only through his machinations were the girl and the child placed in the harem in the first instance; and, but for his advice, the mighty lord Suleiman would surely have freed them as he was asked. We hoped to expose the Vizier to Your Highness’s judgement. We were afraid in so doing that these innocent lives would be destroyed. For they are innocent, Princess. The girl Philippa merely sought, as I have said, to detect what would harm you. The girl Marthe merely came, against her will, to deliver the message which would enable the others to leave the harem.’
The veil stayed turned on him for a long moment; then a ringed hand signed Philippa back to her place. ‘Proceed,’ said the Sultana to Gabriel; and listened in silence to the rest, which was uninterrupted.
It was a good case, thought Jerott. Not watertight, but circumstantially good. And Gabriel had the wealth and the standing and all the confidence of the Sultan behind him. He was glad it was possible to feel so detached. And Gabriel, of course, had made much of the weakest part of Philippa’s statement: if they were purporting to search for evidence of Gabriel’s sedition against Roxelana, why look for it in Roxelana’s own rooms? The explanation did not really satisfy Jerott either; but Lymond had looked neither relieved nor concerned. Jerott, shifting his stance, began to worry, suddenly, about the length of time the whole thing was taking, with Lymond’s own submission not even begun. One of the children said something