Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [283]
Kiaya Khátún looked at him, her perfect dark eyes astonished. ‘I have had it,’ she said. ‘When you said on your knees, Be my bed-fellow. You did not question my honesty, that I remember, on your couch.’
A single trickle of sweat was running down the splendid framework of Gabriel’s face. For a moment he said nothing at all. Then he said, quietly, direct to the Sultana, ‘If these spies tell the truth, then they have what they should not have, and know what they should not know.’
And like an answering chord, Lymond’s voice spoke equally quietly. ‘You forget. There is nothing to know.’
Then the veil lifted, but the small pointed hands kept their grip of the letters. The precise, ringing voice said, ‘Jubrael Pasha … I have to tell you, after reading these letters and hearing the evidence that I think your guilt is undoubted …’
Jerott closed his eyes. He opened them and saw how white Lymond was, and that his hands were laced closely together, to still them. Archie’s head turned the same way, and back. The voice went on, ‘… and would beyond doubt merit the severest death in our power to bestow. On the other hand, it is also clear that others, accredited and without authority from western and infidel nations, have chosen to meddle in our affairs, have penetrated the Seraglio and attempted to enforce their own justice, even though the Sultan himself should give them welcome and be answered with falsehoods.… This also cannot pass unnoticed.’
Philippa also had gone very pale. In Marthe’s face Jerott could distinguish no change: what was she made of, in God’s name? He caught sight of the children, and felt sick.
‘Between nation and nation,’ said the even voice, ‘such a matter might become war. For that reason this hearing has been held in private, where no diplomatic papers may return the result. It is a matter within the Seraglio, for the Seraglio to judge and the Seraglio to punish.… It seems to me,’ said Roxelana Sultán, ‘that this nation has become embroiled in a private feud between two masters: a feud which has been played like a game: falsehood within falsehood and guile within guile. I propose that what has begun as a game, entangling as puppets who knows how many innocent as well as the guilty, should end in like fashion.…’
The eyes behind the veil studied them all: Gabriel’s face splendid even in anguish; Francis Crawford’s still controlled: lightly closed like the chiselled face of one of Gilles’s marble treasures, his eyes very dark. Roxelana said, ‘I propose you a game of live chess. You will return to your cells. When you come back, you will find this room your chessboard. You will each direct your own pieces and each play the part of your own King.’
Lymond said quickly, his voice surprisingly rough, ‘And our pieces?’
‘Will, of course,’ said Roxelana, ‘be culled from your friends, the two children included. I exclude only the girl Philippa. Her I shall present to the winner.’
‘Princess …’ Philippa’s voice was stifled. ‘The boys are too young.’
‘They will be helped. Since it is not known to whom they belong, perhaps they will be safest on Jubrael Pasha’s side——’
‘Safest?’ The sharp inquiry was Gabriel’s.
The veil turned inquiringly towards him. ‘Indeed. Do you think I plan for you a game any less lethal than the one you have both played, so discommodingly, in my city and court? The penalties in this game are death. Death to each piece as