Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
‘But if it is dead, then Mr Crawford is free to kill Gabriel,’ remarked Philippa, her mud-coloured eyes ingenuous in her very plain face.
‘Quite,’ said Jerott. ‘Which makes it seem very possible, doesn’t it, that it is in Gabriel’s own best interests to keep the baby alive?’
‘But inaccessible,’ said Philippa thoughtfully. ‘But inaccessible.’
‘So why are you going to Lyons?’ said Philippa. ‘It’s not on the way back to England.’
Jerott eyed her austerely. ‘For protection.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.’
The following week, within sight of Lyons and its frieze of occupied gibbet and wheel, they became involved, not accidentally, in a Protestant-baiting, despite all Lymond could and did do. The crowd came upon them suddenly, and with them a masked dummy, borne on a hurdle with its limbs dangling, broken in ritual to represent a heretic condemned but so far uncaught.
In a narrow faubourg, without possibility of retreat, Lymond’s party reined in single file and stopped on command: no one spoke. No one knew how, in passing, the rag-filled dummy was freed from its hurdle and slung over the saddle of one of Master Zitwitz’s servants whose horse, taking fright, bolted off through the throng, maiming with its hoofs as it went.
In a climate sulphurous with religious dissent, it was more than enough. The crowd, a rabble of four or five hundred, turned on the cavalcade in their midst. Philippa had time to see the reddened faces, the open mouths, the upflung hatchets and pikes; and then her horse, hauled round by Lymond’s hand on the bit, turned and raced off by the way they had come, a detachment of Lymond’s armed men surrounding her and her maid. From the shouting behind, she knew that Lymond himself, with Jerott and the rest, was momentarily holding the road.
She shouted then, but the men-at-arms round her wouldn’t let her stop. Instead, they brought her in a broad sweep to the river they had been about to cross over, bargained swiftly, and when, a moment later, Lymond and the rest of the company appeared, riding hard, she was already in the ferryboat and half-way across, her horse swimming alongside. Kneeling in the boat, screaming encouragement, she saw them one by one launch into the water, stones splashing about them, until finally they were out of reach of the bank and the crowd, still yelling, began to disperse.
Standing safely on the opposite bank with her dry maid, her dry escort, and a company of streaming horsemen, Philippa said scathingly, ‘That’s men for you. Cover the lady’s retreat, the book says. A hundred years ago, maybe. And what stopped you from coming with me just now? I can swim, you know.’
Onophrion Zitwitz, as so often, materialized at her side. ‘M. le Comte,’ he said, his face less than rosy under the sad strands of his hair, ‘hoped, without success, I fear, to save that poor ill-advised servant of mine.’
‘Oh, Christ, it wasn’t his fault,’ said Lymond. Unclasping the dead weight of his long cloak, he slung it to Salablanca and remounted as he was, his bare head darkened and rivulets from his chain mail drenching leathers and saddlecloth.
‘Was it staged, then?’ Jerott, also remounted, rode alongside. Lymond said, ‘Don’t be a fool, Jerott,’ and turning, continued with the string of orders he had begun when interrupted. Philippa said patiently to Jerott, ‘All right. So you were gallant. And how did you persuade four hundred people to let you ride after me in the end?’
‘It’s easy if you know how,’ said Jerott. ‘Francis emptied his purse on the street as we went.’
‘Oh,’ said Philippa. ‘Tonight we sing in the streets?’ She waited, and then said, ‘What’s wrong? It’s not just Master Zitwitz’s servant? You know I’m sorry about that.’
‘You perhaps didn’t notice my crack over the knuckles just now,’ Jerott said. ‘That was because three men were picked off and killed altogether back there in the street. One was the servant. The other two were the men Lymond himself brought from Midculter. Quite a coincidence, yes?’
Philippa drew a deep breath, and found relief in expelling it. ‘Do you think,’ she said carefully, ‘that someone is going to be goaded into doing something soon?’
There was a long pause. ‘I think,’ said Jerott at length, equally carefully, ‘that someone is going to the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and someone else is going to Flaw Valleys, England, to Mother.’
Which summed it up, Philippa supposed, with regret.
For their stay in Lyons, Onophrion had hired a house, on Lymond’s instructions. As with every domestic arrangement on the entire journey, the controller’s dispositions were perfect. The house, in three chic carved wooden storeys with its own courtyard, was well staffed and admirable. Even more admirable was the discovery that the clothes, the household linen and even the mattresses packed under Onophrion’s direction for the sumpter-mules had survived their swim in the Rhône quite intact.
The food, it became obvious, was Onophrion’s dearest care; but his search for the finest tailors and cloth-makers was meticulous, and soon his special task, that of suitably dressing the men-at-arms and attendants of a Special Envoy of France, was on its rich and orderly way. Only just in time did the Special Envoy, leaving the house with Jerott, catch and stop Onophrion on the verge of purchasing ells of cramoisy velvet, violet satin and cascades of gold bullion to be made into clothing for the Special Envoy himself. ‘No! No. The prayer of Job upon the dunghill was as good as Paul’s in the temple. I shall choose what I want for myself.’
Master Zitwitz inclined his head. ‘I have gone too far. Forgive me. I wished only to save time. If I have the best—only the best—cloths and laces set out for you, would you give yourself the trouble of choosing? I shall appoint the tailors to come as you wish. Also, M. le Comte may require jewels?’ It was a sore point that, whatever Lymond’s possessions might be, Salablanca had charge of them.
‘Do I require jewels?’ asked Francis Crawford, of the air. ‘Let us ask M. Gaultier.’ His eyes wide, he turned, catching Jerott’s sour grin. ‘Think!’ said Lymond. ‘Breeches! Bangles! A Hairy Alpenrose in dimity ruffles! … Don’t you wish you were going as well?’
‘I wish we were going to Gaultier’s,’ Jerott said evenly. ‘We’ll be late.’ And waited while, smiling, Lymond finished buckling his sword, flung a cloak over his right shoulder and slithering downstairs, crossed the courtyard to join him.
The rue Mercière, Lyons, where rested the unique horological spinet, the King of France’s gift to the Sultan Suleiman, was not far away. With the spinet was its maker, Georges Gaultier, usurer, clockmaker and dealer in antiquities, who in pursuit of his fortunes had several establishments the length and breadth of France, in two of which he had had the doubtful pleasure of entertaining Francis Crawford before.
Jerott knew this. He also knew, from sources in Scotland, a little more than Lymond would expect about Georges Gaultier’s permanent house-guest. Crossing the narrow threshold in the rue Mercière he viewed without enthusiasm Maître Gaultier’s fleshless frame, sallow skin and general air of liberal neglect, not helped by his attitude of qualified interest. Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Arabia Felix or otherwise, were to him as familiar, Jerott gathered, as the castle at Blois. He made only cursory mention of his previous meetings with M. le Comte de Sevigny, and betrayed no excitement over the present one. He settled a date for crating the spinet, now finished, and a further date on which the crate, accompanied by himself and assistant, would join M. de Sevigny—or did he wish to be called M. de Lymond?—to sail by river from Lyons to Marseilles.
Lymond said pleasantly, ‘Let’s keep the title until we have to impress somebody. I should also like you and your assistant to call on me at least a week before we embark. We shall be together for a long time. You should meet the rest of my household. And there may be purely domestic matters to settle.’
It was agreed but not, Jerott noted, with any great readiness. Why? Great sums of money—prodigal sums
Alert to every pulse in the air, Jerott heard Lymond say, ‘And may we have the pleasure now of inspecting the instrument?’ But to his surprise, this time the old man made no demur. There were two doors to pass and enough in the way of bars, bolts and keys to inhibit a woodworm. But finally the inner workshop was there, and a smallish freestanding object from which Georges Gaultier smoothed off an ancient striped bedgown masquerading as dust-sheet.
Jerott gasped.
There was a long silence while they looked, the reflected candlelight blinding their eyes. Then the dealer said softly, ‘M. de Lymond? Will this please the Turk?’
‘My dear Gaultier,’ said Lymond. ‘It will send the Shadow of God into transports. I suppose I’ve seen objects more grisly before, but it doesn’t spring to mind where.… Twenty-four-carat gold, Jerott. Look. And studded with rubies like fish-roes.’
‘Yes. I think he’ll be pleased,’ said Georges Gaultier. For the first time satisfaction, animation and even cheerfulness rang in his voice. ‘Sickening, isn’t it?’
Jerott wasn’t sickened. He stood in silence and worked out the cost of the square Gothic cabinet whose double doors of jewels and marquetry opened on a pillared façade of Gothic fantasy plastered with gold leaf and beryls and ivory and crowned by a clock. Among the paintings, the niches, the cupboards inside the cabinet was the drawer containing the keyboard and strings of the spinet, which Gaultier pulled out as he and Francis Crawford, in the closest amity, explored every unfortunate inch of the instrument.
Jerott stood by while it struck, chimed, tinkled tunes and shot representational articles, on ratchets, in and out of suitable orifices. Presently Lymond said, ‘Does the revolting thing play?’ and sitting on the edge of a box, ran his hands up and down the keyboard. Then he lifted them and said, ‘Yes, it does,’ and rising, strolled to the door.
‘Yes,’ said Gaultier placidly, following him. ‘She insisted on that.’
There was a pause. ‘Is she upstairs?’ said Lymond at length.
Maître Gaultier nodded. ‘She is waiting to see you. Of course. And Mr Blyth also.’
Lymond said, ‘I should prefer to meet her alone. Do you mind, Jerott?’
The tone was perfectly and familiarly final. Gaultier ignored it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘With Mr Blyth. Or the lady regrets she cannot give you an interview.’
‘If it’s something personal …’ Jerott said helpfully, but not too helpfully. It was something personal all right. He’d heard of this woman. The Dame de Doubtance, they called her: a madwoman and a caster of horoscopes. Gaultier gave her house-room and men and women came to her from all the known world and had their futures foretold—if she felt like it. She had given some help once to Lymond, on her own severe terms, because of a distant link, it was said, with his family. Plainly, a crazy old harridan. But if she was going to tell Lymond he ought to find a nice girl and marry her, Jerott wanted very much to be there.
Gaultier did not come with them. Abandoning him to the spinet with its double-locked doors, Lymond with Jerott hot on his heels followed an elderly manservant to another part of the house, and up a small, winding stair. There they were led through a thick velvet curtain and left, in absolute darkness.
Jerott, after feeling about for a moment, encountered something sharp and stopped trying. The atmosphere was dire, composed largely, he concluded, of dust and dry rot and very damp textiles. Lymond, presumably somewhere in the room also, said nothing. Through a faint crack of light in the far wall voices muttered: the old fellow must be announcing them. Then the crack widened, and a voice whose sex he could not discover summoned them in. Jerott looked round once, quickly, for Lymond and found him disconcertingly at his elbow, his expression politely withdrawn. Jerott, who knew that look, suddenly felt his skin crawl. Then they were in.
The Lady of Doubtance, Jerott observed, was of the older variety of witch who liked a theatrical smack to her necromancy. The bedroom, or whatever it was in which they now stood, was lit with a single wax candle, so placed that it illuminated only the face of their hostess—that of a woman of considerable age, whose bush of dead yellow hair was dressed in the style of high Saxon romance, its plaits bristling under the long, sagging chin. She was seated in a tall canopied chair, its feet lost in darkness; and of her body, too, nothing could be seen but a glimpse of archaic, unravelling robes, and two hands burdened with rubies, which lay like insects on her lap. The mouth opened, black in the seamed, underlit mask. ‘You are welcome, gentlemen. Come near. I rejoice in comely people around me. You note, Mr Blyth: your exquisite companion is sulking.’
From a distance of four feet, with the hair standing out on his skin, Jerott, wide-eyed, gave a stiff smile. How Lymond’s dignity had stood up to that kick in the teeth he did not know; nor did he mean to look round and find out. But Lymond’s own voice said instantly, ‘You misjudge me. I was projecting, I thought, a strong impression of patience. Kneeling like a drunk elephant at the feet of the Blessed. Melodrama makes Mr Blyth uncomfortable.’
The lightless eyes switched to Jerott. ‘Does it? Yet what more melodramatic than to join a militant order of monks because one rather commonplace young girl died of the plague? Balance your own accounts, Mr Blyth.’
‘I have,’ he said. Hell: how did she know about Elizabeth? ‘I have left the Order of St John.’
The old harridan gave a leer. ‘A blundering Popistant?’
‘If you like,’ said Jerott; and again the shadowy eyes creased.
‘I neither like nor dislike: I merely record the truth. And that is not the truth,’ said the Lady of Doubtance. ‘You left because you found corruption and intolerance against which your own faith was inadequate. You also left because of the fall of Sir Graham Reid Malett, that great Knight of Grace. What a sorry marriage you would have had of it,’ said the detached voice airily, ‘had he been christened Elizabeth.’
No one had ever been able to call Jerott Blyth a submissive young man. Violent in love, in hatred and in all his enthusiasms, he heard those words in a rising passion of outraged disbelief. Also, what was worse, Lymond had heard them. White-faced with rage in the darkness, Jerott opened his mouth; and suddenly heard in his head the lady’s cool words of a moment ago. I neither like nor dislike: I merely record the truth. He did not speak.
Waiting, the other two people in the dark room were aware of a long silence. Then Jerott Blyth said, ‘Then you must put on record that once I loved a girl and wished to make her my wife; and once I loved a man and wished to make him my leader. I shall never do either again.’
Beside him, Lymond did not move. In front of him, the shrewd old eyes under the grotesque Saxon wig stared unwinking at Jerott. Then the Dame de Doubtance said, ‘These are words I have waited to hear. You are adequate to your fate, Mr Blyth. You need no help from me to find it.’
And, surprisingly, it was Lymond’s voice which said sharply, ‘You cannot debar a human being from love!’
The old face, undisturbed, turned to look at him. ‘It is easy. Who should know better than you? But what Mr Blyth has been engaged in was not love, my dear Francis. It was romance, a thing to which Mr Blyth has been very prone; together with melodrama. Whatever made you think that melodrama makes Mr Blyth uncomfortable? He revels in it.’
‘A figure of speech,’ said Lymond. ‘But now, perhaps he might be permitted to leave?’
‘Why?’ asked the Dame de Doubtance, and settling herself in her chair, smoothed out her thick skirts with one bezelled claw. ‘Dear Francis. Do you wish to ask me something so private?’
In a moment, Jerott knew very well, Lymond was going to lose his temper. Mortally relieved to be himself out of the firing-line, Jerott was looking forward to watching him do it. ‘About bastardy, perhaps?
In all the dark room, there was no sound. Then Lymond drew breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nor about anything else. We must not tire you.… Jerott?’ He had turned, without haste, on his heel.
Jerott stayed where he was. ‘What about bastardy?’ he said.
The dewlapped, colourless face smiled at him. ‘Ah, Mr Blyth. You are not afraid of ridicule, it appears. What a pity that Oonagh O’Dwyer should have been Francis’s mistress and not yours.’
To Jerott, everything suddenly became exquisitely clear, including Lymond’s motive for privacy. ‘You cast horoscopes,’ said Jerott Blyth quickly to the withered face in the gloom. ‘Can you tell us the child’s?’
‘If you can repress for a moment your spinster-like longing to meddle in my affairs,’ said Lymond cuttingly, from the door, ‘I am waiting to go.’
Ignoring this: ‘I might, if I were paid in a little courtesy,’ said the Dame de Doubtance to Jerott. ‘There is no hurry, Mr Blyth. Francis will not leave while you are still here.… What is the child’s name?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ said Lymond, answering for him. ‘He knows nothing. He is one of nature’s matrons, oozing arch curiosity. You can tell he’s a wood-nymph by the cow’s tail under those long, snowy robes. He wants to ask about Oonagh’s baby, so tell him. For God’s sake, tell him. Then he and the bloody girl can find and burp it together. If it’s alive.’
‘Oh, it’s alive,’ said the Dame de Doubtance quite calmly. ‘Vows made on Gabriel’s altar are not lightly regarded. Son and father will meet.’
Afterwards Jerott was not certain if the word ‘where?’ was spoken aloud. He knew only that it sprang to his lips, and that, silenced suddenly, Lymond framed it as well. Within the golden hair, the grey eyebrows rose. ‘How quiet we are,’ the Dame de Doubtance said. ‘It would not be good for you, I think, to be certain where. The woman, of course, is in Algiers.’
‘Oonagh?’ Slowly, Lymond had re-entered the room. A shadow in the dark, he passed Jerott and reaching the Dame de Doubtance’s old, slippered feet, dropped quietly to one knee, all caprice gone from his face. ‘Shall we meet?’