Chapter 30
‘And the sovereign prophylactic against subterranean miasmata, the foul airs that cause the Death,’ Sinan heard the Sultanic Secretary say to the chief eunuch, ‘is this.’ Sinan turned and saw Ibn Zamrak holding a dark and glistening bolus in his pallid fingertips. If anything, it resembled a lump of donkey manure, freshly excreted. Ibn Zamrak raised it portentously to his nostrils and inhaled deeply. ‘A pomander,’ he explained, ‘compounded from camphor, pepper, sandalwood and rose petals, all ground up and mixed with rosewater, gum Arabic and bole Armeniac.’
‘And to think he falls for that quackery,’ the Grand Vizier said loudly to Abu Abdallah. ‘God, you can smell the thing from here. And the stink of that vinegar he’s doused himself and his eunuchs with. All to fend off his
