Pawn in Frankincense (16 page)

‘… Salablanca,’ said Lymond. ‘They had seen the Janissaries waiting for us at ail the posterns and portes. He and his friends were trying to reach us first, to warn us. They were all ready to slip us down the roof stairs and smuggle us here to the house of his father, if you hadn’t started to yell.’

‘He could have covered my mouth,’ said Jerott indignantly, sitting up with great success and giving Salablanca his hand.

‘He didn’t want blood-poisoning,’ said Lymond callously. ‘Also he didn’t know you’re so damned slow with a knife.… If you’re as sprightly as all that, hell, you can get up and eat.’ And after he had, it was true, he felt almost better, given twenty-four hours’ unbroken sleep.

It was a courtly household, ruled with quiet ceremony by the tall, grizzled Moor who was Salablanca’s father; who remembered the white marble and the peacocks and the fountains of Granada, before Spain seized them again. He spoke Spanish, as did all the household Jerott saw, although the women who slipped in and out with the plates of rice and vegetables and meats were veiled except for the eyes, and said nothing.

In Malta, Jerott had learned a little of several languages, as was common in that high-bred, mixed society. He knew enough, now, to share with Lymond the courtesies of the table, and to listen later, eyelids drooping, when, seated deep in soft cushions, they talked of the fate of Algiers, and its rich trade and its violent, self-seeking factions, and of the nations which sought to devour it. Salablanca’s father told of the tribes of the desert; of the nomads, of the trading Arabs; of the small towns along the coast which had been seized and exploited by corsairs; of Tunis, another Algiers but bigger than Rome, and torn too by warring interests and races. He spoke too of Salah Rais’s rule: of his journey six hundred miles over the Nubian desert to exact tribute from the subject states under Turkey. He had come back with fifteen camel-loads of gold, so they said.

They were talking still: Lymond questioning and the men, sitting gravely crosslegged in their virginal robes, drinking small cups of hot liquid, and answering him quietly with their hands and their voices, when Jerott, beaten with sleep, was persuaded to return to his mattress.

When he woke, there was grey light in the room and the talk was ending: the men, rising, shook out the folds of their robes and Salablanca, offering scented water to Lymond, was saying as he waited, towel on arm, ‘I am known. Forgive me, but if you follow me to the harbour, thus hooded and robed, none will stop you. Once more clothed in your fashion, you will be safe from the Agha. This night, it was spleen.’

He hesitated. Jerott, pausing behind in the doorway, remembered that it was through Lymond that the big Moor was here at all, and not bastinadoed to death in the castle at Tripoli. He imagined with what delicacy the old patriarch had made his thanks. No wonder they had done their best to rescue them from the Janissaries. What bitter luck, thought Jerott, that Salablanca had swum over too
early to know about Oonagh. And by the time Francis had landed, her life and the honourable reserves of the grave had then both been wrenched from her grasp.

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 Gabriel did to Oonagh O’Dwyer,’ said Jerott with precision; ‘nothing on God’s earth could have prepared him. Do I have to go into details?’

‘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.’