The Ringed Castle Read Free Page B

women three painstaking months to embroider. Without undue haste, unassuming as acut of rye bread, she passed through the late winter mud of the Balkans and was taken for what she appeared to be, a woman among petty Syrian traders, and not what she was, Kiaya Khátún, late harem keeper to Suleiman; the powerful mistress whom the corsair Dragut knew as Güzel, and owning a ransom in gold beneath the false base of each wooden cart.
    It amused the distinguished nobleman who, from Sofia onwards, had offered her his protection. Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Vishnevetsky was also new come from Turkey where he had been carrying out a small and unpublicized task for his master. He had seen Kiaya Khátún in the Seraglio. He had even, to his surprise, found her of decidedly practical help. His mission had failed, but he was inclined to believe she might favour him on another occasion, as she had favoured others, equally gifted and perhaps equally blessed in appearance, in her long and notorious career.
    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 eveningwith 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