Sultan's Wife (47 page)

Mr Ashmole brings the candle close to his face and shows me a set of
metal-covered back teeth. ‘Fifteen years I've had these: I was Nathaniel's first patient, and by God he's been a life-saver. Not just the teeth either: he's mended a broken bone in my writing hand and warded off the tertian ague with his necklace of spiders.'

Necklace of spiders? I can see that Mr Draycott and Zidana would get along well.

Seeing my hesitation, Mr Ashmole smiles indulgently. ‘What age would you say I have, sir? Do not be afraid to insult me: I shall not take it badly.'

‘Fifty, maybe fifty-two?' I hazard.

‘Sixty-five!' he crows exultantly and slaps Mr Draycott on the back. ‘All down to his tonic mixture, which I take every day: if you had seen me fifteen years ago you would not have recognized me, for I was dwindling fast, but his spagyrical tincture has put flesh on my bones and kept my muscles supple; and as for my hair: well, pull on that, sir. Do not be afraid to give it a good yank.'

Tentatively I tug on his wig, and am amazed to find the luxuriant locks are sturdily anchored.

‘You see? Why he is not a celebrated man, I cannot imagine.'

Mr Draycott blushes. ‘Now, now Elias, I am no miracle worker, all I have done is to refine the recipe. It has long been recognized that the Primum Ens Melissae is a most powerful tonic, as much for women as for men.'

‘He gave it to his servant, Agnes,' Mr Ashmole confides, ‘a woman of gone sixty, and all her hair fell out till she was as bald as an egg –'

‘About which she was not happy!'

‘But then it grew back as black and lustrous as it had been in her youth, and she started to menstruate again for the first time in two decades. Last year she gave birth to a fine lad: and if that is not a miracle, then I don't know what is!'

The prickling feeling now runs from my neck down the length of my spine. Have I found Zidana's elixir? It seems too fortuitous to be true, and yet moment by moment as the pair of them talk on, I find belief taking root. The long and short of it is, I let the alchemist treat my teeth, which is by no means as unpleasant an experience as I have feared, and am even able to chew my way painlessly through a meagre supper of bean soup, cold lamb and bread with the gentlemen as I ponder my next step. By the time I
come to leave it is full dark. Over my shoulder I carry a cloth bag containing the promised magnifying glass and a small cork-stoppered flask of a yellow liquid as bright as sunlight. Mr Ashmole insists on accompanying me to White Hall: ‘It is on my way back to Lambeth; and perhaps I might collect the Moorish spurs the ambassador so generously offered this morning in exchange for the glass.'

As we walk in the Temple Gardens, the moon shines on the river through a gap in the clouds, silvering it with a mercury glow and, caught up in the triumph of my run of good luck, I am just thinking I have never seen a lovelier sight, when we are set upon by footpads. There are two of them, big fellows with their faces muffled for disguise.

‘Give me that bag, you black bastard!' one shouts at me.

The other faces off Mr Ashmole. ‘And you: jewellery, money, whatever you have.'

They come at us, swinging clubs and one knocks Mr Ashmole down. As I move to defend him, the other thumps me hard in the midriff with his weapon, stealing my wind. He tries to snatch the cloth bag from me, but I hold on grimly. It is a mistake: another blow takes my legs out from under me and I land with an ominous crash on the bag. The unmistakable sound of broken glass greets me as I move, and so enraged am I at the loss of the valuable magnifying glass that I catapult myself to my feet. As my attacker comes at me again, I catch hold of a club and wrench it out of his grasp with such force that he spins off-balance. A well-placed foot sends him cartwheeling across the grass, to smash up against a tree. Turning, I find Mr Ashmole is laying about the second man with his stick: seeing me coming with the club raised, the footpad makes off, swearing; and after a moment the other scrambles up and follows him, limping heavily.

‘Are you all right, sir?'

Mr Ashmole examines a rip in his coat. ‘One of my better suits, damn them. But other than that, no great damage. And yourself?'

I shake the bag, demonstrating the telltale tinkle of broken glass. On further investigation it turns out that the magnifying glass is in pieces.

*

We part at Westminster, Mr Ashmole apologizing over and over for his foolish choice of route, the gardens being well known for robberies after dark. He hails a boatman to carry him across the river to Lambeth, and I walk the remaining few hundred yards alone, feeling much deflated after my earlier euphoria. The palace guards stare at me curiously, and one says something to his companion that I do not catch; they both laugh. Up in the embassy's accommodation all is quiet. I decide I had better report the matter to ben Hadou and get that unpleasantness out of the way, and am about to knock at his door when it opens and a woman tumbles out, giggling and trying to stuff her honey-coloured hair back into her cap. She has her stockings over her arm: there can be little doubt what has been going on.

‘Hello, Kate.'

Her hand flies to her mouth and she goes a deep red, then grabs up her skirts and flees towards the stairs leading down to the small kitchen.

Ben Hadou tries, and fails, to stare me down. ‘It is all quite innocent,' he protests.

‘It is none of my business, sidi, what you do.' Despite everything, I cannot help but grin.

He looks pale. ‘You must say nothing of this to anyone, do you understand? It is not what it seems: we are going to be married.'

‘Married?'

He nods. ‘Yes, but not a word: if it gets out there will be trouble.' We lock eyes, then his gaze travels downward. ‘Good God, Nus-Nus, have you pissed yourself?'

I look down. Where the flask broke my white robe is stained a lurid, incriminating yellow. The excitements and discoveries of the day have been excessive: I decide there is no point in explaining the circumstances after all. My room feels unnaturally silent without the presence of either Momo or Amadou. I sit on the edge of the bed for a long while, thoughts tumbling wildly. Then I try my best to wash the stain from my robe, but, as if determined to prove its transforming prowess, the tincture resists all my efforts.

I wake early the next day, filled with an unaccountable optimism and energy. Today I shall present Alys's son to the king, and once that is achieved all will be well.

After enduring a tedious meeting between the ambassador and his majesty's ministers about the proposed treaty, more long-winded and even less decisive than the last one, I am finally dismissed by ben Hadou and it is nearing midday. So much the better, I think: there will be less time during which I have to keep Momo hidden. I make my way via the maze of corridors and galleries towards the Duchess of Portsmouth's apartments, and am just rounding the final corner when I meet Jacob coming the other way. When he sees me, his face takes on an almost comically tragic expression.

‘I was coming to find you.'

‘I was coming to see you,' I return brightly. ‘I am to present Momo to the king tonight, privately, in his chambers.'

‘Oh. He is gone. That's what I was coming to say.'

‘Gone?'

‘I asked madame where he was and she waved her hand at me and said, “
Il n'est plus à moi
.” '

‘What?' The pit of my stomach feels as if I have swallowed a cannonball.

‘She will not tell me. Perhaps she will tell you.'

Louise is sitting in her dressing room, flicking through the pages of a gazette, surrounded by fussing attendants. When she sees me, she offers a dazzling smile. ‘Monsieur Nus-Nus! How charming. Come, sit with me. What do you think of this new style of fontange? Is it too high for me, do
you think? Will it make my face look too long?' She turns the magazine –
Le Mercure Galant –
towards me and I am greeted by the sight of a woman wearing a lacy headdress that makes her look like some ridiculous crested parrot.

‘It's hideous,' I say shortly, forgetting my manners.

She trills with laughter, hits me mockingly with the magazine. ‘Men, what do you know of fashion?'

‘I've come to ask about your little page boy.'

‘Jacob?' she looks surprised. ‘He was here a moment ago.'

‘Not Jacob, the other one, the small boy.'

Her face clouds. ‘Oh, Miette? Jacob's little cousin? He was such a dear but I'm afraid I have had to let him go.' She leans towards me confidentially. ‘He has – how you say? Magpie tendencies.'

I stare at her, uncomprehending.

‘
Un voleur!
A terrible little thief.
Mes pauvres bijoux!
I found three ropes of pearls and my best emerald brooch hidden away amongst his things yesterday afternoon. And so when I lost heavily at basset last night I decided the best thing all round was to sell him, finances being what they are. The agent, he give me a very good price.'

‘Whatever he has offered I will double it!' I cry. ‘Treble it!'

‘For that much,
cheri
, you can have Jacob!' Louise pats me on the arm. ‘What is it coming to when a blackamoor wishes a blackamoor for a servant? La, the world's turned upside-down!'

Five minutes later I am running through the Tilt Yard and out into St James's Park with a name and address in my pocket.

The turn for the worse in my luck continues: the agent, Mr Lane, is not at his home in Pall Mall, but at his offices in Cornhill. I do not even know where Cornhill is – it sounds disturbingly rural and distant – but I take note of the address from his servant and hail a hackney carriage. The driver agrees to a vastly inflated fare, but only if I ride up on the box alongside him. ‘Can't be seen to take you inside the carriage,' he says. ‘It'll spoil my business with persons of quality.'

I am tempted to walk, but swallow my pride, and there is, as it turns out, a benefit to the man's prejudice, for the view from the top of the carriage is
exhilarating, as we bowl through the busy streets of the capital, and soon I am even recognizing landmarks and streets: there is the river, and there where I walked with Mr Ashmole to visit Mr Draycott; there the junction with Chancery Lane, leading north towards the Royal Society's meeting place. It is reassuring to gain some understanding of the geography of the city, its being smaller than I had at first thought: by the time we fetch up in Cornhill, I console myself with the knowledge that I could, if I have to, retrace the route on foot, without the need to prostrate my pride to London's hackney-coachmen. Then I remember that I will have Momo with me, and that a small child's legs may be a different matter. Well, I will climb that tree when I come to it, I tell myself, still full of optimism, paying the coachman his two-shilling fare.

Nothing is simple. I scrutinize the address more closely. ‘Jonathan's, Change Lane, Cornhill' is what I have written, which seemed simple enough as I took it down; but the lane turns out to be a little kingdom in its own right, spawning alleys and bifurcations, all gloomy and canyon-like, for the sun does not penetrate their narrow compass. I walk along, dwarfed by the tall buildings that channel the loud conversations of the young men who pass me, too pleased with themselves and their discussions to take any notice of a lost foreigner seeking directions. I pass wig shops, pawnbrokers and taverns, but the overwhelming smell of the place is of coffee. I stop a lad carrying a sack across his shoulders. ‘I am looking for Jonathan,' I tell him. ‘Jonathan Lane.'

He makes a puzzled face at me. ‘Eh?'

‘An agent in slaves.'

‘I don't know no Jonathan Lane, but Jonathan's is there, across the alley.' He indicated a large, colonnaded coffee shop. ‘That's where the traders do business.'

Jonathan's is a huge and noisy cave full of earnest men in tricorn hats talking urgently at one another over close-crammed tables. I catch stray words as I stare around the room – ‘yield' and ‘commodities', ‘stocks' and ‘margins'. It is the language of trading, but the only money changing hands appears to be for the food and drink being served in the establishment. I ask a lad in an apron carrying a tray of coffee-jugs where I may find Mr Lane, and have to
shout over the hubbub. ‘Over there,' he points to a far corner. ‘He's with Mr Hyde, the Duke of York's agent from the Royal African Company.'

I make my way over to them with some difficulty and have to hover for several moments before either of the men takes notice of me, so intent are they on their business. At last, the one in a light brown periwig glances up. ‘No more coffee, thank you.' He looks away again.

His partner, a man in a blue velvet coat laden with expensive frogging, is regarding me now curiously. ‘He don't work here, Thomas, not in that oriental get-up, not unless it's some gimmick to sell a new brand of Turkish coffee. Perhaps he's one of yours?'

Thomas turns back, looks me up and down; frowns. ‘You're not one of mine. What do you want?'

I explain that I am looking for the child who till this morning was in the employ of the Duchess of Portsmouth.

‘Oh, Louise's little blackamoor. What about him?'

‘I wish to buy him.'

This has both of them laughing. ‘Are you setting up in competition, then? Selling your relatives?'

‘I'm with the Moroccan embassy. There has been an unfortunate misunderstanding: the child was sold by mistake.'

Thomas Lane bridles. ‘There was certainly no misunderstanding; it was a very fair deal I gave her!'

The other man, Mr Hyde, looks at me askance. ‘You're not from Morocco, are you? Originally, I mean. Where do you come from?'

I tell him and he smiles knowingly. ‘Ah, I was worried the Africa Company had missed out on a bit of a goldmine, with fellows your size to be come by. But no, we've got that region covered. Good to know.'