The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [6]
Meeting her again, not entirely by accident, in Sofia he thought again what a magnificent pair they made, he and she. He helped her pay her small dues at the barriers and decided after all to give her the benefit of his company and that of his men. As Governor of Cherkassy he had standing outside Lithuania and authority within it. Religious houses made him welcome. Mudwalled villages gave of their biscuit, mutton and rice. And when, on their last day in Turkish-held land, they overtook the camel string of a colonial Pasha, with six cloth-of-gold wagons for his wives and his catamites and a consort of reed pipes and tambors and brass dishes to knit up the travail of their passage, the Turk neither approached nor molested them.
That night, in the hide tent they raised for her, Vishnevetsky shared her supper and ventured a question, which he expected her to avoid.
Instead, she was frank. ‘Roxelana the Sultan’s wife became jealous. It was needful to leave.’
‘You have left Turkey for ever? And Dragut?’
Her hair shone and glittered like coal: her brushed eyebrows gleamed above the moist coffee shells of her lids. Her nose was Greek and short; her warm cheekbones and brow a smooth sun-ripened olive. In Stamboul she had been tinted and gemmed like a Persian painting. She said, ‘Dragut Rais understands these things, as men of stature may do. No jewel can remain in the same box for ever.’
‘And the next owner?’ said Prince Vishnevetsky.
‘Ah, you mistake me,’ said the woman called Güzel; and lifting the four pointed nails of one hand, ran them down his white sleeve and over the flesh of his hand, lightly scoring, so that the blood sprang sudden and scarlet in beads. ‘I am the owner. And I have chosen my jewel and my box.’
He could not get her out of his thoughts. He spent his last evening with her on the frontier, but could not touch her or obtain any satisfaction but word-play. But she was well disposed towards him and at the end rose from her meal, and took one of her keys, and sent her steward to where the merchandise stood ready piled, to pass out of Lithuania in the morning.
Among the rest stood the stacked cases of Ptah, Osiris and Magna, with the customar’s mark still upon them. Key in hand, the steward approached, while Prince Vishnevetsky and his hostess observed him. ‘What a curious fashion it is, this craze for embalmed bodies. If there were tax to pay,’ he said, ‘would we import them, I wonder?’
‘For every pleasure, one pays,’ Güzel said. ‘Come. I have in mind a small gift for you.’ And they crossed to the coffins.
He laid his hand, a tough, soldier’s hand on the top one. ‘A handsome box, for an Egyptian.’
She glanced at her steward. ‘The first is a gift for the Emperor. The one below may be opened.’
It was unlocked. The bandage shroud, delicately disarranged, revealed a custom-free fortune in spice-bags. Half a dozen changed hands, and the rest were repacked, rebound and coffined. Vishnevetsky was smiling. ‘I hope you will remember,’ he said, ‘the small benefits which may have accrued from my presence.’
‘And the pleasure,’ said Kiaya Khátún kindly. ‘For the rest, it is not I who shall remember, but the Emperor.’
They parted company the following day, and he stood on the town walls and watched her pass through the gates with her wagons, before he collected his men, and turned them, and resumed his own journey thoughtfully.
He did not see therefore her arrival at the first post-house; where a group of the Emperor’s men were awaiting her. Nor how she was conducted from station to station, and used with deference but not with ceremony, as one might receive an august employee, but not a person of the first reputation or rank.
Nor how his place