The Aviary Gate (38 page)

‘Yes, I heard the guns.' Paul looked down over the Golden Horn; the waters looked sparkling and innocent in the afternoon sun.

‘You were right about Celia. She's there all right.'

Carew looked at him quizzically. ‘How do you know?'

‘The Valide told me.'

‘
What
?'

‘Well, not in so many words. She's too clever for that.'

‘How then?'

‘Well, it's the most curious thing,' Paul said, frowning. ‘But I think that's why she wanted to see me all along. I'm to tell Fog that it's all to do with the embassy gifts, and that she can converse with me because I speak Venetian – that's what everyone will think, including her own people. But it wasn't anything to do with that.

‘It wasn't her summer palace that I was taken to, but a little pavilion she has on the Asian shore. She told me that the old Sultan had given it to her, a long time ago when she was still the favourite. A garden on the water.' Paul thought of the colours in the late summer garden, of the shimmer of light; the white foot, its instep arched high like a dancer's. ‘One of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, John, like something out of a dream.'

‘What did she say?'

‘That was it, she didn't really say anything. She talked – we talked – about all sorts of things. About gardens. About the merchant's life. About Parvish and his box of curiosities.' The absurdity of it struck him momentarily. ‘Then she said something like: “I find I have taken something that is yours.”' Paul reached into a bag that he had been carrying at his side. ‘And she gave me this.'

Carew took the sugar ship from Paul. He looked at it dispassionately for a few moments and then handed it back. ‘I've just spent two days in a vermin-infested cellar because of this – here, you take it.'

Paul took the little boat and held it up to the sun, until the sails, the spun-sugar ropes and the little caramel-coloured men swirled and gleamed with light.

‘You surpassed yourself this time, my friend,' Paul said. ‘As I live and breathe it is the
Celia
; Lamprey's merchantman down to the very last piece of rigging.' He put the boat down carefully. ‘And there it is, even her name inscribed right here on her side.'

‘She can read our English script?'

‘Unlikely. But there must be plenty of others who can.'

‘What's unlikely is that she thinks this has anything to do with Celia. Why should she make the connection at all?'

‘Aren't you forgetting something? Your subtlety – your not-so-subtle-subtlety,' Paul said drily, ‘has been at the centre of a harem scandal. The Chief Black Eunuch nearly died. The whole thing seems to have been hushed up very expertly, we don't know why, but we do know that for a time they thought that this had something to do with it.' He put the sugar ship carefully back in the canvas bag. ‘Not much escapes her, I'll wager she's three steps ahead of all of us.' Paul's eyes smarted with fatigue. ‘Believe me, she has found us out Carew.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Quite sure.' Paul tugged impatiently at the points at his shoulder and pulled off one of his sleeves. His face looked haggard now, dark shadows pressed beneath his eyes.

‘What do you think she'll do?'

‘If she were going to do anything she'd have done it by now.'

‘Do you think she's told anyone else?'

‘If anyone at the Porte knew that there was even a hint of an intrigue surrounding one of the Sultan's women we'd be dead meat.'

‘Perhaps this was just a warning.'

‘Perhaps.' Paul ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don't know quite why, but I get the feeling that this is all part of something else … of some larger pattern.'

For a moment the two fell silent. Beneath him Paul could see the waters of the Golden Horn thronging with midday water traffic. On board the
Hector
a sailor climbed high into the rigging; slowly the sun was slipping behind the golden roofs of the Sultan's palace.

‘She wants us gone, John. When the
Hector
sails again for England in two days' time we're to be on it.'

Carew, fiddling absently with his knives, nodded silently.

‘And I'm going to have to tell the others.'

‘What, tell Fog?' Carew looked at him with disgust.

‘Are you mad? Of course not. I mean Thomas Glover and the others. Mostly Thomas; he's been here longer and worked harder than any of us for the Company. It looks as if Dallam's finished his repairs at last, and we've just had word that Lello can present his credentials. And when that's over and the
Hector
sails, we sail with her.'

‘If you say so.'

‘No more trying to get messages to Celia.'

‘If you say so.'

‘Thank God Jamal refused to help when he did—'

‘I give thanks for it every day.'

‘So she doesn't know we're here, and what she doesn't know can't ever hurt her.'

‘Right.'

Another silence fell between them. Into it floated the plaintive sound of the muezzin's voice calling the faithful to sunset prayers. ‘I nearly told her, Carew.'

‘Who?'

‘The Valide.'

‘Christ Almighty, Pindar, and you accuse
me
of taking risks.'

‘I came
this
close to showing her Celia's portrait.'

The image came to Paul again. Not of Celia as she appeared to him in the compendium miniature; but Celia like a mermaid, her hair wrapped around her neck, floating, green and gold, in the ocean deep. And now I wonder, why didn't I? he thought to himself in anguish. I had my chance and I didn't take it. I should have thrown myself on her mercy, asked her to take pity on me. Paul gouged the knuckles of his fists into his eyes; rainbows of light exploded in his brain. The one person who could have told me for sure. Sometimes I think it would be better to know, and die, than not to know.

‘Can it really be true?' He turned to Carew. ‘Celia's risen from the dead, John, hasn't she? Tell me I'm not dreaming.'

‘You're not dreaming,' Carew replied.

At that moment a familiar figure in workmen's clothing came into the garden. It was Thomas Dallam, the organ maker. When he saw them he quickened his pace.

‘How now, Tom, what news?' Paul climbed down from the wall. ‘I hear you are to be congratulated. The Sultan's gift is good as new.'

‘Aye.'

Dallam, never a man of many words, stood twisting his hat awkwardly in his hands.

‘What can I do for you, Tom?'

‘Well, Mr Pindar, sir, it's probably nothing, but—'

‘But?'

‘Well, that business that we were speaking about the other day—'

‘Come, speak out, man.'

Dallam looked from Paul to Carew and back again, as if wondering how to proceed.

‘By God, man, if you've blabbed so much as a syllable about it—'

‘I found this,' Dallam said bluntly. From inside his doublet he produced a piece of paper. ‘I don't know what it is, but I thought you should see it anyway.'

Paul took the piece of paper from him.

‘What is it?' Carew went to look over his shoulder. ‘Looks like a picture, a drawing of some kind—'

‘When did you find it?' Paul said. His face was deathly pale.

‘First thing this morning, sir, when I went to make my last check on the organ,' Dallam said. ‘I reckon someone must have left it there last night.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Absolutely sure. I always check everything myself, make sure none of our tools are left lying around, that kind of thing.'

‘Where was it left?'

‘On the organ. It was rolled up, inside one of the angel's trumpets. No one could miss it.'

‘You're sure it wasn't one of your men, Bucket or Watson?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘What's it a picture of?' Carew was still craning over Paul's shoulder. ‘It looks like a worm … No, an eel more like. An eel with fins …'

‘Brilliant, Carew. Can't you see?' Paul tried to keep his hand from trembling. ‘Dear God, it's a lamprey, John. It's a picture of a lamprey.'

In his observatory in Galata Jamal al-Andalus had worked throughout the night.

As was his custom, he sat in his writing room at the very top of the tower. This room was above the observatory where he kept most of his instruments and books, and where he received the visitors and travelling scholars who occasionally called on him: a secret laboratory seen by no one, not even his own servants. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a broad, low table, writing figures in a book. A large star chart, weighted down at all four corners with stones, and tables of astronomical data lay spread out in front of him. For many hours the only sound in the room had been the steady scratching of his pen against the thin vellum. Now and again he looked over, half-expectantly, towards the stairs, but there was no one there.

If there had been someone to observe Jamal, they would have seen that his face in this room looked quite different from the face he showed to the outside world. Was he older, or in fact much younger, than his purported years? They would have found it hard to say. In repose, the playfulness that so animated his features whenever he was in company gave way to something altogether more concentrated. For it was here, in this room, that Jamal's real life took place: a life of the mind, a sinking down so deep into its depths that when he came up for air again it was with the dazzled, almost sightless gaze of a man who has supped with angels.

The table where he sat was as uncluttered and chaste as the mathematical figures he was working on that night. The other side
of his secret room, however, told a different story, and was more like an artist's workshop than an astronomer's laboratory. Pestles and mortars; a variety of beakers, funnels and sieves; spots of black ink; pieces of tissue-fine cloth covered in sheets of gold leaf; and glass vials of coloured powders, red and green and blue, ground from a variety of substances: lapis lazuli, malachite, cinnabar, white and red lead, green vitriol, haematite, alum, verdigris and gypsum. A number of small brushes, rulers and quills lay in neat rows. And beside them all, laid out neatly on the floor, was a work in progress: a long shirt, open from the neck downwards like a kaftan. One side was still plain, but the other side was covered, in a hand so small it looked as if it had been worked on by djinns, in talismanic figures.

Jamal took a pair of spectacles from his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face where the metal bow had pinched the bridge of his nose. He fitted them carefully back in their wooden case, and took up two strange-looking instruments from their place on the table in front of him. Then, pushing aside a curtain on the wall, he made his way through a door hidden behind it, and up a small flight of steps and on to the roof.

It was a perfect night. The sky was cloudless, without a breath of wind, and the moon was full. Jamal took an astrolabe from his pocket and began to fit it together, pressing two metal discs into a circular outer shell. First the
tympan
, showing the correct latitude and coordinates for Constantinople, and then on top of it an openwork star map covered in spiky curlicues, the
rete
. Making up part of the
rete
was a second smaller disc, the ecliptic circle, on which were marked the twelve signs of the zodiac. When the discs were all secured together and ready, Jamal looked up at the sky, and experienced that same vertiginous stab of wonder that he did every time he came here. The stars blazed in the firmament above him. Some, brighter than the others, winked at him with their unearthly light: Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Markab, Alioth, Vega. Their very names, he sometimes thought, were like an incantation, as powerful as poetry.

Which of you shall I use tonight, my brothers? Jamal thought to himself. Low on the horizon he spotted the Dog Star. Ah, there you are, Sirius my friend, you will do nicely. With a well-practised movement he held the astrolabe up to his eye by a metal ring at the top, spinning the sighting bar, the
alidade
, on the back of the outside case so that the hole at one end of it was level with his eye.
Then, when he had located Sirius through the hole, and holding the instrument very still, with expert fingers he adjusted the
rete
, turning it delicately round so that one of the thorny pointers, the one that corresponded to Sirius, was correctly aligned.

He took it down and had just begun to take a reading when a voice spoke from behind him.

‘No need, Jamal. It's the seventh hour after sunset, just as you requested.'

At first the astronomer did not look up, but said with a smile in his voice, ‘Telling the hours by starlight is an enthusiasm I cannot share with many other people.'

‘Even the unequal hours, Jamal?'

The astronomer turned round at last, and when he spoke his voice was mild. ‘It was not I who made them unequal, my friend.'

A dark figure was standing in the shadows behind him.

‘
Al-Salam alaykum
, Jamal al-Andalus.'

Jamal put his hand to his heart and bowed towards the visitor. ‘
Wa alaykum al-Salam
, Englishman. I was beginning to think you wouldn't come. It is too long since we last had a gazing together.'

‘You're right, it's been too long.' Paul stepped out from the shadows and on to the astronomer's roof.

‘You wear a grave face, Paul. You weren't stopped on your way here? My friend John Carew is not in trouble again, I trust?' Jamal's black eyes gleamed.

‘No. Carew's not in trouble again – not yet anyway.' Paul stood blinking in the moonlight. ‘You must forgive me, Jamal. I haven't thanked you yet, for everything you did for him. And for me; for all of us, in fact.'