The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [259]
Just over the Zigana summit, she announced that she would leave her litter and ride downhill herself. By horse, unfortunately, since the camel she favoured was sick. Later, Mahmud Pasha sent to tell her that the camel doctor she had sent for had come, and she had nodded her approval from behind her black horsehair veil, which she would never have troubled to wear in Erzerum or Diyarbekr. When they made camp in the end, she was told they were only three miles short of Trebizond, but in the dusk she could see nothing but a ridge of black trees reflected in grassy water, which soon gave back also the light of the torches and cooking-fires. Only the Vizier’s party and her own possessed tents. The rest razed the small trees and the dense undergrowth on the slopes, and made beds of myrtle and juniper and purple spiraea, with charcoal for cooking and smudge fires for the gnats.
As ever, the piyade remained tidily disposed in their units, without shouting or laughter, and their conversation, such as it was, rarely exceeded a murmur. Like those of the Sultan, many of the Vizier’s personal servants were mutes: deft, obedient, and incapable of displeasing rejoinders. On the march, or in battle, the army had no need for human command, since it obeyed the voice of the drum. The drum horses went with them everywhere. Unstrapped, the drums were their kettles, and stood steaming full of boiled wheat and fat flesh, while the Janissaries made spoons of their drumsticks. They did so tonight, daisy-ringed round the fires in their gleaming white bonnets.
After her own meal, Sara Khatun wrapped her head in the horsehair; called for Sheikh Hüseyin Bey, and walked irritably into the night to find the camel doctor and discover what he had done for her animal. Sheikh Hüseyin, a cousin of her son’s Kurdish wife, went ahead beating men with his stick and asking questions in the Turcoman vernacular. Finally they discovered the fellow sprawled beside a small fire playing draughts and holding a large, leaking bread-poke of yoghourt. A blood-stained cloth hung from his neck. The draught pieces were white pebbles and pellets of dung, and the board was a neckcloth on which the squares were half rubbed off by use.
At first she thought his opponent, a big, black-bearded half-Caucasian was the one that she sought, because his complaints could be heard all over the camp. She was wrong. When the Sheikh’s riding stick poked them to their feet, it was the other who laid down his yoghourt and, fixing the cloth to his mouth, shambled forward. They were both dressed in stout cotton tunics with coloured linings and sashes, and their drawers were good fustian stuffed into felt boots. Hunting clothes. The few possessions they had stacked by their saddles were of the sort, too, that hunters or travellers carried: bows and quivers, some spears and a couple of waterbottles made out of boarskin. There were also two canvas sacks, one of them open. She could see the white linen lining, and the ends of some jars.
Sheikh Hüseyin, who was old-fashioned and thought no well-brought-up woman should ever appear in public, came across and said, “The camel doctor is called Ilyas, and has just had his beard shaved and his tongue taken out by some enemy over a misunderstanding. Ayyub, the black fellow, speaks for him. He says your beast has the colic. The doctor has sent for some blankets, and given him two quarts of linseed oil, the best quality. He says you have a careless driver: another of your camels is galled. The fault is the packing of straw in the