Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
He had been hasty, he realized it. And the Scotsman he had got them from had been right. When he complained; when he took his story to the reputable Knights who would listen, they had shrugged their shoulders in disbelief. His reasons for discrediting Gabriel were too plain. And even de la Valette, approached in the end, had said gravely, ‘It demands investigation: you are right. While the Grand Master lives this is impossible. You must possess patience; and watch; and so shall I. Under the eyes of us both, he can surely do no great harm meantime; if you are right.’
So he had watched. And of the several mishaps which had occurred during that season, none so far as he could see were attributable to Gabriel. The Carrack, sailing to Sicily, had been unexpectedly waylaid by a considerable force of corsairs and but for pure accident might have been lost; but how could Gabriel be responsible for that? Twice, ships bringing them supplies had been sunk without warning, despite absolute secrecy as to their schedule, and for a while their wheat supplies had run short; but again, this could be nothing but mischance. In fact, their supplies from the East, which were under Gabriel’s direct control, had come in with smooth regularity, and they had lacked neither wine nor fruit; which was a pity, Leone considered, as on the whole the Knights regarded the possession of bread as a matter of slightly lesser importance.
The only untoward happening since he had arrived, in fact, was the unexpected death of the little Scots dragoman in Gabriel’s house the other week. He had come on a cargo vessel from Zakynthos, and had been for a long time in the Lazaretto before that, so it was plainly a matter of foreign disease, and for a while there had been a minor panic in case it was an outbreak of plague, and the poor man had been given a hasty burial at sea. But after that, Strozzi thought, Graham Malett had been a shade abstracted through his pretentious posturings during the weeks of planning this raid; and although he was here now, behind Strozzi’s Admiral ship, sailing with de Guimeran in one of the Order’s four galleys, La Catarinetta, he had been, thought Strozzi, remarkably subdued.
It was as well. Now, with the Grand Master’s death surely imminent, Leone Strozzi was about to achieve a small but dazzling coup for the Order. Thirteen miles east of Djerba on the North African coast, Zuara was not a great city. But because of a good harbour it had become rich in commerce and also a profitable lair for all the Barbary corsairs east of Algiers.
He was going to reduce it. He was going to give the Moors inside the town such a fright that they would think long before they allowed Turkish or renegade ships to shelter again; and he was going to teach the corsairs that they had their own depots and harbours and ships to defend before they could freely rove the seas plundering others.
Slaves in Malta had described the fortifications to him. They were all on the north. The land side of Zuara, they said, was both unguarded and unfortified. They had only to advance to the ditch unseen through the palm trees, and Zuara was theirs.
So the Moorish slaves said. He had no reason to disbelieve them: they had too much to lose. He was taking several of them with him as guides; and the Order’s galleys, and his own brigantines fully armed. And aboard he was carrying twelve hundred men, including the three hundred best Knights of the Convent. Three-quarters of all the Knights on Malta were sailing with and under Leone Strozzi: de la Valette was under his command; Graham Malett must look to him for orders.
They had already made their dispositions: his own nephew was to lead the advance scouting party; the Commander de Guimeran was to lead the advance guard proper, and the Chevalier de la Valette the main body of troops following. He himself, Leone Strozzi, would bring up the rearguard with the reserve infantry, throwing them in where required; directing the order of battle. It would succeed. He would cover himself with glory. And the youngster of his own name, Piero’s son, his charming young nephew, would make a name in his first big engagement.
Flushed with triumph; buoyant with expectations; illumined with shadowless vanity, Leone Strozzi stood under the fluttering red silk of his banners and watched the pale coasts of Africa come nearer and nearer.
The Catarinetta had her accident on the morning of the 14th of August, their last day at sea. How it happened, no one afterwards was exactly able to say. One moment, the little fishing-smack with the striped sail was skimming towards them, set on a parallel course; and the next, with a crunch of broken timber that shook the Catarinetta, she was under their flank, and the few men who had been aboard her, hurt, dead or dying, were spilled in the sea.
The slaves, shouting, had shipped oars automatically, but by the time de Guimeran recovered his balance and ran up on deck, the Catarinetta’s impetus, despite the jar, was enough to have driven her some distance onward. He satisfied himself that no irreparable damage had been done to her sides and, leaving Gabriel to initiate emergency repairs, de Guimeran replaced him at the tiller and gave orders to turn.
Afterwards, he remembered that Gabriel, working like a slave himself, his face lined with remorse, had still turned and demurred, hesitantly. There were no survivors by now. And they had the lives of twelve hundred men in their hands. Already the other galleys had forged far ahead. They must keep up, or endanger the coup. De Guimeran didn’t listen. He had seen one dark head in the water which was not floating helplessly, and one arm alternately upraised and thrust forward swimming. He completed his orders and La Catarinetta swung round, her sails filling, and flew back the way she had come.
By the time she reached the wreckage, the swimmer was the only man living. Standing amidships, boarding tackle in his hands, de Guimeran nursed the galley along, order by order, until it lay as close as was possible to the swimming man. There was blood on the face under the black, streaming hair, and he was swimming, de Guimeran saw, one-handed, but doggedly for all that. He was not dressed like a fisherman.…
Gabriel, standing beside him, his work abandoned, said suddenly, ‘He will need help; his wrist is broken. Let me support him up the ladder …’ and, without waiting for permission, vaulted lightly over the rail and into the surging water beside the wounded man. The swimmer looked up.
‘It’s …’ said the Chevalier de Guimeran. ‘My God, it’s Jerott Blyth.’
To that, Jerott knew later, he owed his life. Half conscious from a blow on the head and the pain of his wrist; clouding the water with the blood from the shallow cuts which covered his body, he looked up as someone jumped into the water beside him, but he did not hear de Guimeran’s shout. He was looking instead at the man treading water beside him: the smiling, big-featured face; the guinea-gold hair, regardlessly cropped; the magnificent shoulders under the soaked doublet, with the Cross of St John white on its breast. ‘My dear Mr Blyth,’ said Sir Graham Reid Malett, tenderly reaching out one muscular arm and placing it, relentlessly, on Jerott’s tired shoulders. ‘It is no use. I’m afraid you must drown.’ Then the water closed over his head.
He came up once, as another body splashed into the water beside him. For a moment he saw Gabriel’s face quite clearly: saw his eyes narrow, and heard his voice say, ‘De Guimeran … really, I can manage this by myself, I am sure.’ Then he realized that the firm hand under his other arm was de Guimeran’s, and that despite anything Gabriel might wish to do, he was being propelled surely and swiftly to safety.
Graham Malett caught up with him again, just before he dragged himself, with de Guimeran’s help, up the rope net they had let down over La Catarinetta’s low sides. Jerott felt the powerful body behind him, and the ungentle grasp on his loose arm just as he reached the top of the rail. Then, with a sudden quick movement, entirely invisible to any of the craning heads watching above, his broken wrist was seized without mercy and twisted.
Like summer lightning, the pain fled through his nerves. Jerott’s heart thundered once; he heard the tearing gasp as the breath left his lungs; and then he pitched forward on the deck of the Catarinetta at de Guimeran’s feet, quite unconscious.
He was alone when he woke; lying on a bed in the gunroom, in darkness. Sitting up
Or perhaps … It was extraordinarily quiet. With care, Jerott got to his feet, and picking his way between bedding-rolls and packing-cases and assorted litter, found the door and then, in the next hold, a ladder leading up to the deck. His head swimming a little, he climbed it and looked round about him.
It was night. Even if he had not seen them, black against the indigo sky, the smell of the palm trees would have told him they were anchored close off the coast, lightless, with the other ships of the fleet lying silent around them. But for slaves and seamen; perhaps a knight as second officer deputizing for captain, and one or two caravanisti, they were empty of men. The expedition had arrived, and had landed. But not at Zuara.
Jerott turned. An unknown voice, speaking diffidently in the darkness, said, ‘Chevalier Blyth? I was to pay you M. de Guimeran’s compliments, and say he hoped not to be long delayed. I trust you find yourself better?’
It was not the time to point out that he was no longer a Knight; that he had abandoned the Order. Jerott said, ‘Are you in charge? Do you know where you are?’
He heard and groaned at the slight hauteur in the reply. ‘My name is St Sulpice: I am in charge, sir, and at your service. And we are at Zuara. The landings were completed while you were unconscious, some hours ago.’
Jerott said, ‘Have you ever been here before?’
‘At Zuara? No. It is new to all of us. Therefore, the pilot.’
‘Who was the pilot?’ said Jerott, but he knew the answer already.
‘An excellent man, I believe. A Genoese,’ said St Sulpice defensively, ‘taken on by Sir Graham Reid Malett. You do not consider him at fault?’
‘I know he’s at fault,’ said Jerott Blyth dryly. ‘He’s brought you to a place at least twelve miles too far east.’
They wouldn’t believe him. Hurried consultations with the skeleton crew on the Admiral galley and then the others merely brought the same conclusion: if Jerott was right, then why had the Prior not sent a skiff back to warn them when he and his men discovered the error? It might not, of course, have been immediately noticeable. They might even have landed the army before it became obvious. And by then it would, Jerott thought, be rather easier to march twelve miles by the coast than to face embarking twelve hundred men all over again and sailing farther along.
Easier, that is … if you did not know that the mistake was intentional; that the district was warned; that the Aga Morat and his troops were only waiting somewhere to spring the whole trap. He said, persuasively, ‘Let’s settle it, then. Send a skiff ashore and see what information it can pick up. We may even have found the Prior left a message for the fleet which has somehow gone astray.…’
They sent a skiff. He didn’t go with it. It was too late, anyway. They had left hours ago: they would be nearly at Zuara by now, or would have met whatever fate was planned for them en route. As a messenger of warning he had utterly failed, and through no fault of his own. What danger had Gabriel scented on seeing that fishing-vessel, which had made him take such instant steps to annihilate it? Somehow, he must have learned, in the messages from Zakynthos, that his secrets had been penetrated—even that Archie had escaped with the knowledge, bound for Djerba.
This, for Gabriel, might be the last disservice he ever planned to perform for the Knights. With exposure now almost certain, he had used the last of his authority to lead his fellow Knights into disaster. He had no intention of going back to Malta, Jerott suddenly realized. That was why, having failed in the water, he merely ensured that Jerott would remain silent for long enough for the expedition to leave. Nothing must discredit Gabriel before he had achieved this night’s work. Afterwards, it did not matter. The great landing, planned once probably to throw Leone Strozzi for ever out of the running as a possible Grand Master, was being used instead to raise even higher Graham Malett’s stock with his master the Turk.
The skiff came back, with consternation aboard. It was true. This was not Zuara. The army had gone; marching on foot. They had found the pilot, his neck broken; and a shallop floating loose on the shore, with a dead man in the bottom. ‘It is a trap,’ said Jerott. ‘A trap I came to warn you about. We can do very little now to set it right. But if you trust me, I will tell you what I think we should do.…’
He divided the fleet into two parts. The smaller he left, fully lit, under a junior commander at a spot within six miles of Zuara. The rest he took himself, with St Sulpice assisting, to lie off Zuara itself.
They rowed there à outrance, against the wind; and the wind brought them ashes, and the stink of charred flesh and gunpowder, and the thud of cannon and the crackle of small shot, and the shrieking, ululating roar of a town in sack.
Somewhere in that conflagration was Lymond. And somewhere, Graham Reid Malett.
The decision had been Lymond’s, as every decision had been Lymond’s on that unpleasant little trip out of Djerba on the fishing-vessel Archie Abernethy had procured them. Jerott, who was known to the Knights, would intercept the fleet and warn them by sea. Lymond and Abernethy would meet them, for double safety, as they landed, and would by then be able to give Strozzi, with some luck and some very hard work, an idea of the dispositions of the Aga Morat’s two forces, and of the true fortifications of Zuara.
If the odds were overwhelmingly against them, the Knights could withdraw. If, turning the ambush to their advantage, they had some hope of success, then they might well go ahead. Whichever way it turned out, Graham Reid Malett, Jerott knew, would never leave that beach-head alive.
Now all that had gone for nothing. Because of Gabriel, the fleet had not been warned by himself. And again because of Gabriel, the landing had not been made near Zuara, but far down the coast, where Lymond could not possibly have met them. He might hope, thought Jerott, to take the coast road east from Zuara himself and intercept Strozzi, if he had seen, in the dark, the direction the fleet from Malta was taking, and was able to guess roughly the land route they might choose. But was that even possible, at night? And if he found them, might he not be shot down on sight? Invading at night through enemy country, no one would think of asking questions before they let fly.…
Or he might wait near Zuara for the advance scouts, and find both Strozzi to warn and Graham Malett to kill by that method, if the Knights had not already been ambushed by the Aga Morat’s force from Tripoli before they ever got to Zuara.
Whichever he had done, the Knights had entered Zuara: so much from the seafront was plain. Perhaps, with no fleet to succour them, they had had no alternative. Perhaps, seeing the galleys there waiting, they would now attempt to withdraw. Giving his orders; seeing the boats lowered ready, Jerott hesitated still.
Never till now had he fully realized how widely Francis Crawford and he were now separated; how much damage Lymond had himself wilfully caused, in the last weeks, to the relationship existing between them. On board the fishing-vessel, waiting to be slipped ashore with Archie just outside Zuara, Lymond had seemed to him as hard and self-contained as the culverin on the rambade, uttering no words that were not orders; his intelligence shut against all life and all humanity that did not concern his one purpose.
Once before, Jerott had seen him like that, in Algiers. He had seen him as he was now, with every skill of mind and body tuned to the ultimate pitch in pursuit of one object. Francis Crawford like that was uncontrollable and very close to invincible. But not invincible. And not impervious to the reckoning afterwards.
Walking to the side of the Catarinetta, Jerott thought of many things. Of the nuns at Baden; of Shakib and the others who died in Algiers. Of Ali-Rashid the camel-trader, and the branded infant at Bône.
He heard his own voice saying, She is more than dead, Francis. If I thought you would do it, I would beg you to go without seeing her. And Lymond’s own voice, long ago in Scotland, before the child Philippa snatched the knife from his hand and allowed Gabriel to make the escape which had led to all this; Lymond’s own voice in the Cathedral in Edinburgh, saying, For Will Scott, for Wat Scott his father … for the pain you occasioned the Somervilles and the corruption and death of your sister, for what, above all, you hoped to do to this realm of Scotland, I call your life forfeit.
Jerott Blyth set his lips tight; checked the sword and the dagger Archie Abernethy had given him, and the brigantine jacket he had begged from St Sulpice; and letting himself down into the shallop, with St Sulpice, the Serving Brothers and all the men he thought could be spared, had himself rowed to Zuara at speed.
The gates of Zuara had been open, with no guards on duty. Strung-up after that nervous, twelve-mile march with his troops, Leone Strozzi found that puzzling. And yet there was no reason to be over-wary. They had walked through twelve miles of palm groves and beach; past walled gardens and mud houses and high banks of Indian fig; along sandy tracks between patches of melon and peppers and apricot and orange and pomegranate trees, without meeting so much as a dog.
If anything was strange, that was strange. But then, God’s will was in the work to their hand. God’s will ordained that instead of scrambling through a ditch at the back, they should walk through the city gates in the front. He made certain dispositions, and laid down certain rules: each company had its work to do. They were to meet in the central square without scattering or plundering until all posts of danger had been seized. And to secure their exit, he left several companies guarding the gateway outside. Then they marched in.