Pawn in Frankincense Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR

  Dorothy Dunnett’s

  LYMOND CHRONICLES

  “Dorothy Dunnett is one of the greatest talespinners since Dumas … breathlessly exciting.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Dunnett is a name to conjure with. Her work exemplifies the best the genre can offer. It combines the accuracy of exhaustive historical research with a gripping story to give the reader a visceral as well as cerebral understanding of an epoch.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Dorothy Dunnett is a storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about suspense, pace and invention.”

  —The New York Times

  “Dunnett evokes the sixteenth century with an amazing richness of allusion and scholarship, while keeping a firm control on an intricately twisting narrative. She has another more unusual quality … an ability to check her imagination with irony, to mix high romance with wit.”

  —Sunday Times (London)

  “A very stylish blend of high romance and high camp. Her hero, the enigmatic Lymond, [is] Byron crossed with Lawrence of Arabia.… He moves in an aura of intrigue, hidden menace and sheer physical daring.”

  —Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “First-rate … suspenseful.… Her hero, in his rococo fashion, is as polished and perceptive as Lord Peter Wimsey and as resourceful as James Bond.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A masterpiece of historical fiction, a pyrotechnic blend of passionate scholarship and high-speed storytelling soaked with the scents and colors and sounds and combustible emotions of 16th-century feudal Scotland.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “With shrewd psychological insight and a rare gift of narrative and descriptive power, Dorothy Dunnett reveals the color, wit, lushness … and turbulent intensity of one of Europe’s greatest eras.”

  —Raleigh News and Observer

  “Splendidly colored scenes … always exciting, dangerous, fascinating.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Detailed research, baroque imagination, staggering dramatic twists, multilingual literary allusion and scenes that can be very funny.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Ingenious and exceptional … its effect brilliant, its pace swift and colorful and its multi-linear plot spirited and absorbing.”

  —Boston Herald

  Dorothy Dunnett

  PAWN in FRANKINCENSE

  Dorothy Dunnett was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries; King Hereafter, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of The Scottish Highlands, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Lady Dunnett lives with her husband in Edinburgh, Scotland.

  BOOKS BY

  Dorothy Dunnett

  THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

  The Game of Kings

  Queens’ Play

  The Disorderly Knights

  Pawn in Frankincense

  The Ringed Castle

  Checkmate

  King Hereafter

  Dolly and the Singing Bird (Rum Affair)

  Dolly and the Cookie Bird (Ibiza Surprise)

  Dolly and the Doctor Bird (Operation Nassau)

  Dolly and the Starry Bird (Roman Nights)

  Dolly and the Nanny Bird (Split Code)

  Dolly and the Bird of Paradise (Tropical Issue)

  Moroccan Traffic

  THE HOUSE OF NICCOLÒ

  NiccolÒ Rising

  The Spring of the Ram

  Race of Scorpions

  Scales of Gold

  The Unicorn Hunt

  To Lie with Lions

  The Scottish Highlands

  (in collaboration with Alastair Dunnett)

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JULY 1997

  Copyright © 1969 by Dorothy Dunnett

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain in hardcover by Cassell & Company Ltd., London, and in the United States in hardcover by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, in 1969.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dunnett, Dorothy.

  Pawn in frankincense / Dorothy Dunnett.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76236-8

  1. Crawford, Francis (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Middle East—

  History—1552– —Fiction. 3. Courts and courtiers—Fiction.

  4. Historical fiction. gsafd. I. Title.

  PR6054.U56P39 1997

  823′.914—dc21 96-45598

  Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1_r2

  For Ninian and Mungo

  THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

  FOREWORD BY Dorothy Dunnett

  When, a generation ago, I sat down before an old Olivetti typewriter, ran through a sheet of paper, and typed a title, The Game of Kings, I had no notion of changing the course of my life. I wished to explore, within several books, the nature and experiences of a classical hero: a gifted leader whose star-crossed career, disturbing, hilarious, dangerous, I could follow in finest detail for ten years. And I wished to set him in the age of the Renaissance.

  Francis Crawford of Lymond in reality did not exist, and his family, his enemies and his lovers are merely fictitious. The countries in which he practices his arts, and for whom he fights, are, however, real enough. In pursuit of a personal quest, he finds his way—or is driven—across the known world, from the palaces of the Tudor kings and queens of England to the brilliant court of Henry II and Catherine de Medici in France.

  His home, however, is Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots is a vulnerable child in a country ruled by her mother. It becomes apparent in the course of the story that Lymond, the most articulate and charismatic of men, is vulnerable too, not least because of his feeling for Scotland, and for his estranged family.

  The Game of Kings was my first novel. As Lymond developed in wisdom, so did I. We introduced one another to the world of sixteenth-century Europe, and while he cannot change history, the wars and events which embroil him are real. After the last book of the six had been published, it was hard to accept that nothing more about Francis Crawford could be written, without disturbing the shape and theme of his story. But there was, as it happened, something that could be done: a little manicuring to repair the defects of the original edition as it was rushed out on both sides of the Atlantic. And so here is Lymond returned, in a freshened text which presents him as I first envisaged him, to a different world.

  CHARACTERS

  On board the Dauphiné

  FRANCIS CRAWFORD OF LYMOND, Comte de Sevigny

  JEROTT BLYTH, his captain, a former Knight of St John

  ARCHIE ABERNETHY, his serjeant-at-arms, former Keeper of the French King’s Menageries

  SALABLANCA, a free Moor in his personal service

  MAÎTRE GEORGES GAULTIER, usurer and horologist, of Lyons and Blois

  MARTHE, a protégée of the Dame de Doubtance

  PHILIPPA SOMERVILLE, young daughter of the mistress of Flaw Valleys, near Hexham, England

  FOGGE, her maid

  ONOPHRION ZITWITZ, a Swiss household official M. VIÉNOT, Master of the Dauphiné

  Other characters, in order of their appearance

  THE DAME DE DOUBTANCE, an astrologer, of Lyons and Blois

  SALAH RAIS, Viceroy of Algiers

  OONAGH O’DWYER, a captive Irishwoman in Dragut�
�s household, and mother of Francis Crawford’s son, Khaireddin

  LEONE STROZZI, of Florence, Prior of Capua in the Order of the Knights Hospitaller of St John

  ALI-RASHID, camel-trader, Mehedia

  KEDI, nurse to Khaireddin

  THE AGA MoRAT, Turkish Governor of Tripoli

  GÜZEL, mistress to Dragut Rais, the corsair

  SHEEMY WURMIT, a Scots dragoman

  MARINO DONATI, Venetian merchant of Zakynthos

  MÍKÁL, a Pilgrim of Love

  EVANGELISTA DONATI, sister to Marino Donati

  GRAHAM REID MALETT (Gabriel), Grand Cross of Grace of the Knights Hospitaller of St John

  PIERRE GILLES D’ALBI, a scholar

  PICHON, his secretary

  TULIP, a child of tribute, boy-page to Philippa

  GABRIEL DE LUETZ, Baron et Seigneur d’Aramon et de Valabrègues, French Ambassador to Turkey

  ROXELANA SULTÁN (Khourrém), wife of Suleiman the Magnificent

  SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT, Sultan of Turkey and Lord of the Ottoman Empire

  NÁZIK, a nightingale-dealer, Constantinople

  ISHIQ, boy to the Meddáh, Constantinople

  HUSSEIN, Chief Keeper of the Royal Menageries, Constantinople

  JEAN CHESNAU, French Chargé d’Affaires at Constantinople

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Lymond Chronicles: Foreword by Dorothy Dunnett

  Characters

  Map

  1 Baden

  2 Lyons

  3 Marthe

  4 Oonagh

  5 Algiers

  6 Leone

  7 Bone and Monastir

  8 Mehedia

  9 Gabès

  10 Zakynthos

  11 Djerba

  12 Djerba

  13 Thessalonika

  14 Zuara

  15 Zakynthos and Aleppo

  16 Aleppo

  17 Thessalonika

  18 Constantinople

  19 Chios and Constantinople

  20 Constantinople: Topkapi

  21 Constantinople: The Meddáh

  22 Constantinople: The Golden Road

  23 Constantinople: The House of Gaultier

  24 Constantinople: The House of Jubrael Pasha

  25 Constantinople: The Divan

  26 Constantinople: Pawn’s Move

  27 Constantinople: The French Embassy

  28 Constantinople and Thrace

  29 Volos

  1

  Baden

  The bathers of Baden in summer were few and fat. Winter was the best season, when everyone came home from the fighting, and the baths public and private were filled with magnificent men, their bodies inscribed with the robust holograph of the sword.

  The pretty girls came also in winter; the unmarried with their maids and their chaperones: the matrons bright-eyed and dutiful; eager to furnish their lords with an heir.

  The rule was mixed bathing. The great officers of the Church went in winter, smoothing off in the sulphurous water the ills of a summer’s rich feeding; and rested afterwards sweating in bed, the warm bladders under their armpits, dreaming of Calvin. Noblemen from the Italian States and the Holy Roman Empire; from the France of Henri II and the uneasy England of Edward VI came to Switzerland for the hot baths of Baden: noblemen, soldiers and merchants, lawyers and physicians and men of learning from the universities; courtiers and diplomats; painters, poets and leisured connoisseurs of the human experience.

  To trace one man in Baden at the turn of the year was a strenuous but not a disagreeable task. Neither was it impossible, even if the man were international in tongue and appearance, and had no knowledge of, or desire for, your presence. Jerott Blyth and his companion, having crossed half Europe pursuing their quarry, tried four Baden inns before locating the Engel, the largest and most high-priced of all, with the armorial bearings of all its most notable patrons studding the snow-covered front.

  Among them, neat, fresh and obliging, was the familiar blazon of Lymond and Sevigny. Their journey appeared to be over.

  With Jerott Blyth, innkeepers never shirked the proper discharge of their duties. To the doggedness of his Scottish birth, his long residence in France and his profession of arms had lent a particular fluency. He was black-haired, and prepossessing and rude: a masterful combination. Coming out of the Engel in five minutes flat, he swung himself up on his horse beside the rest of his retinue and led them through the slush and over the square to the far side, where the snow had been swept from an imperial flight of white steps, at the top of which was a pair of carved double doors. Jerott Blyth looked down at his companion. ‘He’s in there,’ he said. ‘In the baths. In the public baths. In the public mixed baths. You’re too young to go in.’

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ said Philippa bleakly. She would have lied about that, except that Fogge, the family maid, was on the pony beside her. She added, ‘The stable-boys swim in the Tyne.’

  ‘In waist-cloths?’ said Jerott. ‘Philippa, Baden isn’t the same as the northern counties of England.’

  ‘In nothing,’ said Philippa. ‘I know.’

  She got in, as she had persuaded Jerott Blyth to bring her half across France, by force of logic, a kind of flat-chested innocence and the doggedness of a flower-pecker attacking a strangling fig. Then, followed by a pink, sweating Fogge, they climbed to the gallery which ran at first-floor level overlooking the pool.

  The spectators walked there, eating and drinking in their clean velvet doublets and listening to the lute and viol music which ascended in waves through the steam. The discreet abundance of steam and the powerful stink of bad eggs were the first things which Philippa noticed. The next was the size of the pool beneath, and the fact that, unlike the private baths of the hostelries, it had no central partition segregating the sexes: merely an encircling bench divided modestly underwater into pews for each bather.

  They were full: so full that in the centre of the pool twenty or thirty of the displaced frolicked or swam or floated, comatose in the warm and sanitative water, beneficial for worms, colic and melancholy; and a certain cure for barrenness in young wives. Beside Philippa, an elegant visitor in shell-pink satin leaned over the carved balustrade and cast a little garland of bay leaves and gilded nutmegs into the water. Two nuns, hesitating on the edge of the pool in their long peignoirs of lawn, flinched and stepped back, but a pretty black-haired woman sitting submerged just below them looked up with the flash of a smile, and the elderly man seated beside her, his paunch bared to the waist, followed her glance with a scowl. Beside Philippa, the gallant smiled back, muttering under his breath; and fishing inside his doublet for the second time, pulled out a preserved rosebud, rather tattered, and took aim again, with rather more care. Philippa followed his eyes.

  Women; pure, handsome and pert; with hair curling about their ears and their fine gowns afloat in the water around them and filming the cheerful pink of their shoulders and breasts. Men, sick and stalwart, athletic and obese: the churchmen with tonsure and crucifix lodged on the broad, naked chest; the wealthy served by their retinue, the small floating trays drifting among them bearing sweetmeats and wine, and a posy to offset the fumes. Of soldiers there were fewer than usual: the war between France and the Emperor Charles had dragged on, that winter, in the Low Countries and Italy and the beautiful men this time were otherwise engaged.

  Then the steam shifted and Philippa saw there was one suavely muscled brown back, stroked here and there with the pale scars of healed thrusts and the raw marks of an encounter more recent. One gentleman of the sword, just beyond the lady of the pretty black hair and the smile; who was amusing himself with a stiff game of bouillotte, played on a light wooden board drifting between himself and a large and roseate person of no visible rank.

  Of the identity of the gentleman-soldier Philippa had no doubts at al
l. The arching hands, dealing the cards; the barbered yellow hair, whorled and tangled with damp, could belong to only one person, as could the two deferential servants in blue and silver and red, waiting uneasily damp at his back.

  ‘There he is,’ said Philippa quickly, just as the limp rosebud thrown from beside her touched the bather’s bare shoulder, and he flicked round, glancing upwards, and trapped it.

  For a moment Philippa saw him full face: a printing of blue eyes and pale, artistic surprise. Then, rose in hand, the bather leaned further round. Behind him, the two nuns still stood, nervously hesitant, while beyond the bouillotte game two seats had become vacant. With dreadful grace, the yellow-haired man got to his feet and, reaching up, presented the rose to the elder of the pair of shy nuns, bowed, and handed both ladies down the wide shallow steps and into their seats. Then he sat down in a gentle lapping of water, and picked up his cards.

  ‘He didn’t see us,’ said Philippa, disappointed. The gentleman in shell-pink, retrieving his upper torso from the reverse side of the balustrade, sighed and observed, ‘How wasteful of Nature. You know him, madame?’

  Jerott saved her from answering. ‘We knew him in Scotland. He commanded a company of which I was a member.’ He gave a sudden, malevolent grin and said, ‘I think you’d have better luck with the lady.’

  Shell-pink, ignoring that, pursued his inquiry. ‘His name? He is alone?’

  ‘His name is Francis Crawford of Lymond. He has the title of Comte de Sevigny,’ said Jerott. ‘As for being alone: I don’t even know who he’s playing with.’

  ‘Ah, that is simple,’ said shell-pink. ‘That is Onophrion Zitwitz, the duke’s household controller: one of the best-known officials in Baden. Perhaps, when you greet your friend, you will introduce me also?’

  Jerott’s eyes and Philippa’s met. ‘When I meet my friend,’ said Jerott Blyth carefully, ‘there is likely to be a detonation which will take the snow off Mont Blanc. I advise you to seek other auspices. Philippa, I think we should go down below.’