Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
Then Salablanca looked at Lymond and said, ‘We have heard of the wound done to your honour. May God make woe to attend such a man as your enemy. My father asks, as brother of brother, if he may aid you against him who wrongs you, or may avenge what is evilly done.’
‘He is a great and generous man,’ said Lymond. ‘But I wish no help, and need no revenge. Except in one thing.… The woman, I am told, sold her child to the man Shakib for a camel-trader when the trader was last in Algiers. If I wished to trace this child, how might it be done?’
‘Wait, señor.’ Salablanca was gone only a moment; long enough for Jerott to realize that this conversation was taking place between Lymond and Salablanca so that as few as possible might be involved in it; and that Lymond for the same reason had denied all claims of revenge. Somewhere, thought Jerott, there was the man who conveyed the instructions from Gabriel, and who had seen that they were carried out. But Salablanca lived in Algiers. Lymond would not ask him to meddle with what might destroy him. On the other hand: ‘Your camel-trader is a man named Ali-Rashid,’ said Salablanca, returning. ‘He comes often: his route is well known. We have written it for you.’
Carefully, Lymond took the paper Salablanca held out to him. ‘How do you know this is the man?’
‘There is only one such, between Dragut Rais’s departure and now. More, the man Shakib has been seen with him.’ He paused, and then said, ‘The señor will forgive me, but his clothes have been burned. The chain and jewels we placed in this purse.’
‘They are for your Imám,’ said Lymond. ‘If he will pray for a heretic?’
Salablanca was quicker than Jerott. ‘For la señora?’ he asked. ‘She is with God. One has said: There is not any soul born, but its place in Paradise or Hell has been written.’
‘What we choose to do then is nothing?’ said Lymond, and his face was not pleasant. ‘I have taken far too long as it is to face the consequences of my actions. You must not unlearn me my lesson. I have several other tests, still more acid, to pass.’
It was a quick, bitter memory, which Jerott better than Salablanca understood. Of a dark room, and a lit candle, and Lymond’s voice asking, ‘Shall we meet?’
And: ‘You will see her,’ was what the Dame de Doubtance had said.
The journey to the harbour in Salablanca’s company through that humid, grey dawn was without accident. Under the bright canopy of the Dauphiné, soaked with night rains, lights glimmered, and someone came soft-footed to the rail to lower a plank. Lymond, stopping, turned to Salablanca, his face blanched under the white hood. ‘We owe you no less than our lives. Remember us. Serve your family well. And live with your own sons’ sons, full of years.’
The black eyes smiled, but Salablanca, bowing, was grave. ‘It shall be done; but presently. Now, I come to serve you.’
Lymond had not expected it. His brow creased, and he said, ‘I am honoured; but you are free. Your father needs you and has welcomed you home. I cannot thus repay his care of us.’
‘It was he,’ said Salablanca gently, ‘who, when I broached such a subject, enjoined me to come. I have brothers. I have no wish to stay here, other than for the term of your visit. I wish to make my fortune with you.’
‘Well, you can forget about that, for a start,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God’s sake hang on to it. Because we’re going in the opposite direction.’
But he gave him his hand, as did Jerott; and without lingering they walked up the gangplank, gave the password and boarded the Dauphiné.
Philippa, who had sat up worrying half the night, did not in the end hear them come, having dropped into heavy sleep just before dawn.
It had been a day she did not particularly want to repeat; with the leaderless return of Lymond’s escort, with orders to unload arms and deliver them to the Viceroy, and the further news that Mr Crawford and Jerott were still at the palace and were not to be sought out, however late they might be. It was Jerott’s lieutenant, reassuring her, who told her that by this means Lymond had bought time and opportunity to search for Oonagh O’Dwyer. As the day wore on, the thought comforted her less and less.
Nor did the climate on board the Dauphiné help. These shining caseloads of carbines being transferred so promptly into infidel hands had started a rustle of unease among soldiers and seamen. Archie Abernethy, who had pursued his strange career in the royal menageries of Moslem and Christian throughout Europe and Asia before serving with Lymond, could not entirely keep his mind on his chosen mission to torment Onophrion Zitwitz; and Onophrion himself, each time he returned from market with his train of small naked boys bearing food-laden baskets, became gloomier and gloomier still. Although that, Philippa conceded, was due rather more to the strain of providing a royal banquet at short notice and with inadequate supplies for a Moslem dignitary with numerous religious restraints on his diet, and an uncountable force of attendants.
It rained. Marthe, undisturbed, sat on her bed reading, and emerged only for the formal intake of food. Even when Maître Gaultier, with an unusual flush under his dark skin, slipped on board after dark, greeted them, and then proceeded to stroll restlessly up and down the quayside and round Onophrion’s prized line of ovens, she did not trouble to join him, but read until the lamp failed, and then undressed and slept. Philippa, enviously, wished she could do the same, and then decided she would rather be interesting and sensitive. She gave up combing her hair, which the salt air had reduced to a kind of scrim of brown hessian, and, lying down, proceeded to keep her fingernails short in the way Kate admired least. Then she overslept.
It was Marthe’s voice from the ladder which woke her. A watery sun, filtered through canvas, shone through the hatchway on to the crossed arms and yellow satiny coils of the other girl’s hair, and Philippa, staring glumly at that finely sculptured profile, saw there was a smile on it. ‘They’re back,’ Marthe was saying. ‘They’ve just come on deck after changing, and the ship’s complement are being mobilized like cattle. They say Salablanca came on board with them, but not the well-favoured Oonagh.’
Sitting up, Philippa was dragging on clothes. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ The cornflower-blue eyes narrowed, following some unseen movement on deck. ‘But our Envoy is not quite himself.’
‘Let me see.’ Shoving past, Philippa got to the hatchway, and leaned an elbow on the cover. The deck was swarming with feet and at first she could see no one belonging to them. Then, farther down the long gangway, she saw Lymond talking to Jerott. Dismissed, Jerott turned away, dressed, she saw, in a sensational russet that clashed with the awning, leaving Lymond in full critical view.
Marthe had been right. From polished head to fingertips, his grooming was faultless. But once or twice on this journey, and once or twice at his home back in Scotland, Philippa had seen him loose his tongue and his temper like this; his face contemptuous, his manner insufferable. He had not, she judged, had any sleep. He gave orders, as she watched him, to three other men, and each in turn jumped to obey him. Then he moved off with the bos’n swiftly out of sight to the prow.
Jerott, approaching, blocked her view and would have passed if Marthe had not called him. ‘Dare you pause and tell us what’s happening?’
He glanced down at her, but failed to smile. ‘The Viceroy is embarking at noon. After we have eaten and he has gone, we set sail.’
‘The woman is dead?’ Marthe put the question, sitting on the hatch-covering hugging her knees, while Philippa peered up at knee level, holding her undone hooks and eyes with one hand.
Jerott hesitated. Then, surprisingly, he sank down on his heels at their level, russet velvet and all, and said, ‘Yes. We found her, but she was dead. The circumstances were … I can’t tell you. But, for God’s sake, put up with anything he says or does today. He has reason.’
‘They like to mutilate their dead,’ said Marthe. ‘He must have been prepared for that, surely.’
‘For what Gabrie
‘And the baby?’ intervened Philippa quickly.
Get rid of the women, Lymond had said. Just that: one laconic order among many. It could not be done here, but at the first opportunity, Jerott knew, they were being sent off. This was no voyage for them. So he touched Philippa’s thin, bitten hand with one of his own, and said, ‘I’m sorry. But it seems the child died.’
‘Seems? You don’t know?’
‘When Dragut Rais left for the winter, they were mostly sold off. Oonagh’s baby was going overseas, but it died on the way. So they say, and I believe them,’ said Jerott Blyth glibly. ‘You know he offered a lot of money for the return of the child? So I don’t think they were lying.’
He saw Philippa’s eyes become perfectly round and thought, ‘Hell. Now she knows he was interested.’ But she suddenly stopped asking questions and it was Marthe who said disingenuously, ‘Did he? How much?’
Jerott’s black eyebrows disappeared into his hair. ‘It’s none of your bloody business,’ he said, and stood up. ‘And a word of warning, besides. You don’t discuss this with Lymond.’
‘It would overturn him. He is distraught,’ said Marthe readily, and with that cynical, brittle blue gaze smiled at Jerott Blyth’s dark face. ‘To pass over grief, they say, the Italian sleeps; the Frenchman sings; the German drinks; the Spaniard laments, and the Englishman goes to plays. What then does the Scot?’
To Jerott’s mind sprang, unbidden, a picture of the sword Archie Abernethy was trying to clean at this moment below. ‘This one,’ he said, ‘kills.’
At noon, Salah Rais along with eighty attendants presented himself on the quay beside the Dauphiné to break bread with his host. Resplendent in silks, velvets and jewels, with the slaves capped and shirted and the ship dressed with streamers and tassels and hangings of blue silk brocade, the Special Envoy and his entourage welcomed him, and under the awning dispensed talk, food, music and non-alcoholic refreshments.
No shadow of significance was allowed to dim the flowing periods or interfere with the interminable courtesies. No reference was made to the Knights of St John, to the inconvenient return of the Agha, to the Special Envoy’s interest in certain inhabitants of the city, or to various incidents and inconveniences which had come to light during the night. There were, perhaps owing to the fact that a princely gift at the King of France’s expense had been dispatched that morning to the Agha, no hitches at all. Only immediately before retiring and after presenting Lymond with a copy of the Qur’ân, tastefully enclosed in a solid gold and pearl box, did Salah Rais, through his interpreter, murmur something about bullets.
The query died on his lips. Before him on deck, already borne by his escort, there passed crate after crate, already opened, and revealing the shining balls cradled within. As the procession creaked over the gangplank and began its journey on shore up to the palace, the Viceroy rose to bestow his blessing and thanks for the open heart and generous Christian hand of royal France.
He left; and so did the eighty. On shore, Onophrion and his minions, aided by the improvident of the town, began to clear off the feast. Like a well-oiled machine, already rehearsed and well used to submission, the ship prepared to take rowing stations and leave. Jerott, standing by the poop rail with Gaultier and Archie, watched the awnings drawn back, and the pilot depart for the outer harbour to survey the weather.
In an hour, the ship was clear for departure. Under a cloudy sky, in a light, lukewarm air, Marthe and Philippa joined the little band at the poop, and finally Lymond came himself with the captain. ‘Notre homme, avertissez que nous allons partir: que le canon soit leste pour tirer le coup de partance.…
‘Boute-feu!’ The bark of the cannon. ‘Leva lengue!’ Silence. ‘Tout le monde fore du coursier et tout le monde à sa poste!’
Like puppets, they jumped, thought Philippa. Seamen to the rambade; pilot to the poop; the comite to the coursier, the helmsman to the tiller, the gunners to the prow. Only the slaves, being chained, had no need to run. At a blast of the whistle, they had already stripped off their shirts: at another blast, naked to the waist, they bent forward, the calloused hands repeating their pattern along the great looms of the oars. The whistle blasted again and again, and the Dauphiné started to move.
Philippa stood on the tabernacle a long time, watching the glittering white-robed assemblage on the quay blur and dwindle, and the perspective of house and college and minaret, of trees and gardens, of the corsairs’ palaces, and the Viceregal Palace and the Kasbah, crowning it all, become a flat white triangle on the hilly African slopes.
Perhaps because there was, in the end, nowhere else he could go, Lymond stood with them also, without speaking, and watched it pale and recede. Georges Gaultier, standing at his niece Marthe’s side, suddenly turned and addressed him. ‘You are a hard man, sir, to give firearms to folk such as these. I trust you never have cause to regret it.’
‘Your sentiments also, Jerott?’ said Lymond. The light voice mocked.
For a moment, Jerott was silent. Then he said, ‘There’s a saying. Dio dà i panni secondo i freddi.’
Lymond turned his back on the coast of Algiers. He put his hands on the rail and returned Jerott’s stare and said, ‘Yes. It was cold. And God gave of his comfort accordingly, but with modifications from outlying quarters. The wheel spindles on those carbines are faulty, and all the key-spanners are missing.… Let us,’ quoted Francis Crawford largely, with a sudden scathing theatricality, ‘let us imitate the swallows, the storks and the cranes, which fetch their circuits yearly, like nomads, and follow the sun.’
And as if he had so commanded it, the light above their heads burst its watery films and drove warmingly on the ridged backs of the rowers, on the seamen and courtiers and officers and on the heads of the two girls standing, brown-headed and fair, on the poop, as the Dauphiné turned east, and away from the cold.
6
Leone
Having worked extremely hard at his job, having fought for his life, and having undergone considerable strain with the briefest of rests in the previous thirty-six hours, Jerott passed that afternoon on board the Dauphiné in something of a dream, and at dusk, having seen her safely anchored for the night just off the Barbary coast about thirty miles east of Algiers, he checked that he was no longer wanted, and stumbled below to sink into sleep.
Philippa, watching him go, noticed that Lymond had not yet succumbed. There was, of course, a great deal to do at the outset of a voyage of this length, They had unloaded some of their cargo and taken on fresh stores of fruit and water and livestock, which had to be properly stored. The dirt of the harbour had to be cleaned away, and all the temporary dispositions made for staying in port. They had found two stowaways: Christian slaves who had slipped on board unseen, and these had given rise to concern because recent wholesale defections to visiting French ships had made the Viceroy unduly sensitive to such happenings.
But all these, thought Philippa, were properly the business of the ship’s master and of Onophrion. She eyed Lymond as he moved about; wishing she were older; wishing she were a man, and battling, too, with a weight on her conscience. Oonagh was dead. Believing the child too to be dead, Lymond would now make his way direct to the Sublime Porte. But what if the child were alive? What if it had crossed the sea safely, and could be traced through the address the Dame de Doubtance had given her, on the island of Zakynthos?
Go alone with Abernethy, the old woman had said; and she had promised. And what if, after raising false hopes, the child proved after all to have died? She carried her problem into supper, found Lymond was not there, and carried it out again.
Because of the warmth of the night, the tents had not been put up. After the long stint of rowing, the slaves were already half asleep, curled in their chains, although there were lights round the fougon, and the smell of food hung on the air. Subdued talk cam
‘Philippa?’
He had seen her. She said, ‘It’s all right. I thought I’d dropped something.’
Lymond said, ‘Come here. I want to speak to you. I don’t mind company: it’s only food I don’t want.’ He waited until she came slowly up beside him, and then spoke gently. ‘You know, Philippa, we can’t take you with us: not now. Kate would never forgive me.’
Philippa took a long, shaky breath, and kept her voice steady. ‘You mean, now the baby’s dead, you don’t need me?’ she said.
There was a little pause. Then he said, ‘Jerott told you?’ And as she nodded her head in the dark, ‘I see. Yes, that’s partly the reason. The other is that the … issue between Gabriel and myself has changed in character a little. I’m going to put you on shore at Messina with Fogge and Archie and two of my men, and you’ll find your way to Sevigny and home by a route which I’ll give you: there are friends of mine all the way.’
‘And Marthe?’ said Philippa jealously.
‘Marthe also, I hope.’
But Philippa, struggling with the implications of all that, was suddenly pierced by another sickening thought. ‘You’re going to try and kill Gabriel? Now it won’t harm the baby?’
There was another little pause. Then Lymond said carefully, ‘He must die, Philippa. You must understand that.’
‘But he’s on Malta. If you touch him, you’ll lose your own life.’
‘So long as he dies, what does that matter?’ said Lymond with sudden impatience. ‘In any case, I’m not discussing Malta at present. Even if we don’t get a good wind in the morning, we can be in Sicily in two or three days. Make quite sure you’re ready, that’s all.’