The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
Chapter 38
THE SULTAN ARRIVED in the cool of the night, in a subdued bustle of sound and the light of many torches. When the sun rose on the little marsh three miles south of Trebizond, all the high ground above was covered with the cooking-fires of the main army, and among the aromatic pines of the highest ridge stood the great pavilions of the Sultan himself, the supreme Emperor, King of Kings, the victor, the winner of trophies, the triumphant, the invincible: by the will of God, Mehmet the Fortunate.
“He drinks,” said Tobie. “Oh, Christ, if you make that joke again about camels…”
“Don’t underrate camels,” Nicholas said. “Mohammed was the son of a camel-driver. Good Arabs want to die on their camels and go to the grave wrapped in their camelskins. Then comes Paradise, everlasting delight of the senses; and absolutely no dissatisfied customers. I like your vest.”
The gift of a fur-lined vest had arrived from the Grand Vizier Mahmud, with a message summoning the doctor Ilyas with his spokesman to the Sultan’s tent three hours before noon. Tobie said, “If you’re nervous, how d’you think I feel?” This time, they had part-cooked the liver and, gagging, he was about to put it into his mouth, with the cage that kept his tongue down. His hat was melon-shaped, with a small upturned brim. He felt like an idiot. Nicholas seemed quite at home in his own hairy headgear topped by the agile whisk of his squirrel. Between that and his newly daubed beard, his face had a watchful look as he moved about, dressing. Tobie began again. “They say he rides between two lines of archers, one right-handed, one left-handed. That way, they don’t show him their backs when they shoot people. If I dropped dead on my camel this moment, you wouldn’t notice it, would you?”
Nicholas twisted his sash round his tunic and tied it, and sat down to pull on his boots. After the second one, he said, “I should. Your tongue would fall out.” Tobie wondered what, in the interval, his mind had been dealing with. A lot, he hoped. It was Nicholas, the non-mute, who was going to bear the brunt of this interview.
It was the trappings of power rather than the King of Kings himself that overwhelmed those he summoned. First, the many-chambered pavilion of crimson silk turned back with gold and bound with patterned fillets and tassels. The drooping hosts of the banners, and the plumed lines of the guard with their round shields and axes and scimitars. Then the silence within, despite the great crowds standing against each inner wall of the audience tent.
Alone, the Sultan sat in the centre, crosslegged upon round tasselled pillows, with a fan of white ostrich feathers moving slowly in one ringed, short-fingered hand. The bulbous white of his turban was not of the traditional shape, but had been devised by himself to the pattern habitual to scholars. To it had been added an osprey feather in a socket of emerald. His caftan, woven in Bursa, was a maze of stylised flowers: carnations, tulips and roses; and its only ornament was the line of intricate buttons that ran from its throat to its hem. Above it, the beard and moustache were deep brown, and not thick. The eyes, under arched, painted brows, were brown as well, and the nose was the nose of a parrot. A parrot eating a cherry, they said of him, referring to the red, red short lips. The Sultan said, “Speak for your master. Where did he learn his healing?”
The carpet was silk, and embroidered with gold. Tobie kissed it and rose beside Nicholas. Nicholas said, “Lord, my master’s uncle lived among Mamelukes. The name of my master is Ilyas.”
Behind and to one side of the Sultan was the Grand Vizier, the bandage still on his face, with Tursun Beg and the other secretary beside him. On the other side was the Sultan’s personal staff, one supposed. As a boy he had been taught by Ahmet Gürani, a Kurd. Now, they said he had Greeks and Italians about him—Kritovoulos the historian; Kyriakos of Ancona; Maestro Jacopo of Gaeta, his usual physician whom, thank God, Tobie had never met. The Sultan said,