Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [77]
‘Remove from your minds,’ Lymond had said, ‘the image of a live human child.’ For Francis Crawford, meticulously fulfilling his responsibilities, such advice would appear simple. But he was not here in this room; only Jerott, who had forgotten his own safety and whose heart throbbed with strange pulses as he looked at this withered black woman and said, ‘And where is the little boy? The little fair boy? After all that, how is he?’
The Syrian, rising, smiled and forestalled her answer. ‘Come and see him. He is with the cocoons, which must be turned to avoid mould. Those soft, small fingers; that delicate skin. Such beauty! Come, come and see. Kedi will await you by the brazier.’
Moving to the door after the silk-farmer, with the dizzying perfumes, stirred by the heat, confusing his senses, Jerott heard again, from the warren of little rooms and the unseen gallery above, the subdued sounds of laughter, and music, and children’s voices calling, complaining, giggling. As they walked along the little dark passage curtains twitched; he caught a glimpse of a man’s dishevelled white robe, and once he was stopped by a child, as he hurried after the Syrian: a lovely boy of six or seven years old, with long lashes and glistening black curls, who caught his hand, saying laughing, ‘Yalla ma’y … hall liyâ … sharr biyâ.…’ Then the Syrian, turning back, hissed at him, and the boy, still laughing, disappeared with a flick of embroidered slipper below his expensive short gown. The smell of myrrh went with him—my God, are they all drenched in perfume? thought Jerott; and stumbled on after the farmer.
The little building to which he was taken stood at the end of a walled garden; a paved enclosure behind the house strewn with half-dried washing, dim in the dark; and a carpenter’s bench and a cistern of marble, the water swimming dark and greasily in the moonlight. There was no fight but the oblong lying behind them from the lit door of the house; and ahead, the traces of candlelight from the low stucco building they were approaching, leaking through ill-fitting shutters. The windows, he noticed, were barred, and there were iron rods rammed into sockets on either side of the door.
It did not seem right. Contrary to his hopes, the night air only made his muddled head worse. Leaning against the cold, substantial wall, Jerott watched the Syrian unbar and unlock the door, and tried to listen to what he was saying. ‘Forgive me. Like the pressing of thirsty camels on their watering-troughs, the thieves of Mehedia would come to purloin my silk, and but for this, all my labours and those of my family are empty as water. Come in, Efendi, and rest. It is warm, and the child shall keep you company while we gather his clothes.’ And opening the door, he bowed Jerott in.
Inside, he thought, it was like a threshing-floor. Half of the brightly lit room was empty, with a lit brazier like the one he had left smoking gently by an Egyptian mat in the middle. The rest was lined with tier upon tier of wide racks clouded like an aviary with azure blue down. But these little beings, thought Jerott with melancholy, did not sing, or move, or breathe. They were, in their hundreds, winding-sheets of indigo-fed silk, each enclosing the shrivelled corpse of its host. Two thousand to make one single pound of raw silk for an emperor’s robes … and they must be turned, and turned, to prevent mould. Fighting his lethargy, Jerott scanned the bare room.
‘He has fallen asleep,’ said the farmer. ‘Khaireddin! Remember your lesson!’ And from a drift of blue floss on one of the low shelves there came a small sound and a child’s fair head lifted instantly, its face still closed and shadowed with sleep. There was a moment’s pause while the child sat, its dazed blue eyes opening and closing. Then the Syrian said, chidingly, ‘Khaireddin!’ and, with obedient