Pawn in Frankincense (25 page)

It was one hour before midnight when the last man out of the warehouse upset the brazier, with care. Because of their forethought, nothing burned but the silk, and the smouldering flicker as worms and cocoons dissolved into vapour and ash was hidden from all Mehedia’s high towers by the sealed windows and door. By the same token and with the same foresight, the sealed windows and door kept in the ash and the vapour.

The ash was harmless. The vapour was concentrated hydrocyanic gas.

At one hour after midnight the guards on the landward gate of Mehedia, who were Spanish and thoroughly schooled in their jobs, distinguished a camel-train, surprisingly making its way down towards them. Although the caravan made no secret of its progress and was well lit, the walls were immediately manned, and a dozen cannon and twenty crossbows and arquebuses were trained on it from that moment until it finally came to a halt, and three riders rode from its van and stopped just under the gates. At a sign from the captain the watch, not impolitely, called down the information, in Arabic, that the gates were closed until dawn.

There was a pause. The captain, a susceptible bachelor from Valladolid who disliked night duty for a number of reasons, saw that the first of the three riders, a turbaned Moor who was presumably the dragoman, was interpreting to the second, whom he now saw was in European clothes, and well-cut European clothes at that. He caught a glimpse of a chain which he would have priced at three thousand écus in Madrid and something very nice indeed sparkling in the gentleman’s hat. Making a diplomatic guess, the captain cleared his throat, stepped to the ramparts, and repeated the same information, more politely, in Italian.

The fellow in the chain rode forward, looked up, and let off a salvo of acidulated Spanish that all but fried the guard in its armour. The captain quelled his first instinct to recoil, and instead snapped at his lieutenant. ‘You have heard no commands from the Governor to admit special persons tonight?’

The lieutenant hadn’t. Reinforced, the captain turned to the battlements and said as much, in frigid Spanish, to the gentleman below. The gentleman below, in highly idiomatic Spanish, responded by repeating his demands, together with various related promises of an unbenign nature. The jewels in his enseigne were as big as marrowfat peas.

‘¿
Cómo
?’ said the lieutenant anxiously. ‘He says,’ said the captain, ‘that this is the train of the Donna Maria Mascarenhas, an eminent
lady esteemed by the Vatican, on her way to the Holy City on pilgrimage. The Governor of Tunis commends her to the care of the Governor of Mehedia and since she has a falling sickness, which makes her journeys protracted, had sent a messenger to our Governor earlier today requesting the privilege of entry if they arrived after dark. So this fellow says.’

‘Who’s he?’ said the lieutenant, who was a married man. ‘And if there’s a lady, where is she? I see nothing but camels.’

‘He’s steward of her household, he says.…’ The captain could see nothing but camels either, and he knew what camels cost, and was able to calculate, quickly, the amount of baggage they must be carrying. He could distinguish a number of drivers, but no one else of consequence. Then the third rider, for the first time, moved forward into the torchlight.

‘
!Jesús!
’ said the captain.

Down below, sitting on horseback beside Salablanca before all Ali-Rashid’s camels, Lymond felt Marthe ride up between them. He did not need to turn to know how she looked. Mantled in the satin of her gilt unbound hair, with the wide severe brow, the white skin, the borrowed skirts and the pearls she had, unaccountably, produced, each one as big as a hazelnut, she was a vision to make all the arquebuses droop and the crossbowmen slacken and sweat. ‘Perhaps,’ said Lymond with virulence, ‘the captain might risk his reputation to the extent of admitting the lady, her servant and myself while he sends to inform the Governor that his guests have arrived. You may assure yourself, sir, that the Moor and I carry no weapons. Unless you suppose the lady carries a culverin I cannot conceive what harm we may do you.’

Hopelessly, the captain grasped at a last straw. ‘You say the lady suffers some sickness?’

‘Nothing infectious,’ said Lymond with cold reserve. He still had not glanced towards Marthe. ‘Donna Maria suffers from fits.’

‘
!Qué lástima!
’ said the captain politely. He found it hard, it was clear, to take his eyes from her. ‘And what form do these take?’

‘Really, I hardly think——’ Lymond began acidly, but the captain interrupted him. ‘Your pardon, sir. But with the safety of my troops to consider …’

‘Really, it will hardly affect your troops,’ said Lymond. ‘The lady unhappily suffers fits of extreme violence, during which she struggles, screams and attempts to throw off all her clothes. Now, will you kindly arrange for us to enter?’

Five minutes later, they were all three inside.

They had twenty minutes, Lymond calculated, before the lieutenant came back from the castle with a troop of fully armed soldiers and the news that the Governor of Mehedia had never heard of the Donna de Mascarenhas but was very much aware there
was a French Envoy loose in the land. With Salablanca sitting in the background, he sipped some very sweet Candian wine, along with Marthe, in one of the upper rooms in the guardhouse tower in company with the captain and one of his subordinates: in between making conversation he was calculating, if the truth were known, what kind of head the girl would have for strong liquor. The captain, who was drunk on pure sensation, said, ‘You will forgive me, Señor Maldonado; but had you not told me, I should have taken the lady and yourself for sister and brother.’

‘My father,’ said Marthe, ‘unhappily, was not a fastidious man. I have several of Señor Maldonado’s brothers as well in the household. They also suffer from fits.’

‘Of the same kind?’ said the captain, gazing.

‘Approximately,’ said Marthe coolly. ‘They scream, struggle, and try to throw off all my clothes.’

‘But Donna Maria forgets,’ said Lymond. ‘Poor Horatio, poor Vincenzo, poor Nicolò, poor Giovanni: by persevering in time they all discovered total relief.’ He studied Marthe. ‘You look pale.’

‘Lack of my usual exercise. I shall, I think,’ said Marthe, ‘take the air on the battlements, if the captain will allow me?’

The captain had no objections: there was a guard at the foot of the stairs. He was only regretful, bowing her out, that for the time being he was losing her company. For a moment, standing beside her on the open guardwalk in the soft night, he looked around at the small occasional lights and the dark murmuring trees and said, ‘Shall I come with you?’ But she refused sweetly, smiling, and he let himself in again to the room with Señor Maldonado and the Moor, whose door, with apology, he had locked.

‘Señor, more wine? I am amazed,’ said the captain, ‘that so lovely a lady has not married.’

‘But indeed she has married,’ said Lymond. ‘Five times. And not one husband, poor fellow, survived matrimony by more than a year. She is too good for them. The last one, dying, compared her to a nugget of gold. Do you melt it or do you rub it or do you beat it, said he, it shineth still more orient.’

‘Sayest thou?’ said the captain, glancing towards the half-open door. And at that exact moment, out on the battlements, the Donna Mascarenhas emitted a scream. The captain jumped to his feet.

Another scream. ‘The fit!’ said Lymond.

The captain strode to the door. Another scream. And another.

The captain flung the door open. Anxiously, Lymond called. ‘If she undresses, I pray you do not restrain her! It can cause untold injury!’

The captain ran out but did not forget, in going, to close and lock the guardroom door on the two men behind him. Then he fairly raced round the guardwalk.

It was empty. But over one wall there trailed a fragment of what was once a woman’s gauze veil. And on the paved path below, as, pallid, he leaned over and sought it, was a crumpled heap which had once been a woman’s bright dress, with the marvellous string of baroque pearls still entwined in its folds. Silently, the captain turned and made with speed for the stairs.

Marthe watched him go, from where she lay flat on the roof in her tunic and hose, the blonde hair again bundled into its cap. When he was quite out of sight, she dropped to the walk and turning the key of the guardroom with both her small, strong-boned hands, opened it for Lymond and Salablanca to walk through.
‘Ad unum mollis opus?
said Marthe.’ ‘Make the most of it, Mr Crawford. This is my single dissolute act for tonight.’

And soft-footed beside them, she slipped down the unguarded stairs and past the knot of excited men searching the path, and into the dark narrow ways of Mehedia.

Soberly hooded, and without chain and cap, Lymond led them direct to the house of the silk-farmer’s sister. It was easy to find, for desultory fires burned here and there, although the looting had now almost stopped, since there was nothing left to take away. They stepped into the courtyard through which the stout silk-farmer had led Jerott that evening, the door hanging burst and splintered behind them, and through another smashed hole found their way into the house.

There was no one there; but what had been there was not hard to tell. Working swiftly from room to room, they were silent. The looters had taken the silk cushions, the carpets and the braziers. They had taken the fine sheets and the mats and the copper dishes for meat. But they had left, permeating everywhere, the sickening smell of the perfume; the odour of drugs; the peculiar reek of sensual abomination. And they had left the small mats, the low, dirty hand-marks and the worn toys of children.

It did not take long. Salablanca found the courtyard at the back, with the carpenter’s litter of shavings still burning, and the charred hut beyond. It had remained fairly intact although its roof and doorway had gone, and the walls were blackened inside where some kind of fittings had burned. There was a great heap of black powder also at one point on the floor, which gave off throat-catching fumes when Lymond stirred it. Marthe said, ‘That’s silk.’

‘What? in the cocoon, you mean?’ They were the first words Lymond had spoken.

‘I’ve smelt that in Lyons, when there’s been a fire at the mills. The fumes are deadly, if they’re enclosed in a small space.’

This was a small, enclosed space, ‘Lymond said. This was perhaps where the fire started. Sparks would carry to the woodpile outside, and from there to the house.’

‘It’s not only that,’ said Marthe. ‘It’s been deserted. You don’t find a place like this picked clean by looters if the family stood by.’

Lymond said, ‘If he was in there, with the gas: would he have a chance?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Marthe. ‘But if he did survive, he’d be in no state to evade murderous silk-farmers. He’s probably dead. If he isn’t dead, there’s only one safe place he can be.’

‘The castle,’ Lymond agreed.

Marthe sighed. Pulling off the cap, she shook out her long hair and with careful fingers undid the points of her tunic and pulled that off too. Released from its waistband, her shift fell, in modest if slatternly folds, to the ground. ‘Resurrection,’ she said, ‘of Donna Maria Mascarenhas, undressed, refitted and safely recovered by her steward. I flung off my skirt, screaming and climbed on the roof.… You and Salablanca climbed after me, and then chased me out of the building while the captain and the others were searching below.… How did you get out of the locked room?’

‘The captain forgot to lock it as he ran out. Or didn’t turn the key fully home.’

‘Yes. So you followed me here … gave me your cloak for decency’s sake … if you please … and then took me straight to the castle. You’d better take me straight to the castle. We want to be seen very obviously going there.’

Lymond slung her his cloak, resumed his own finery and for a moment stood still, looking at Marthe. ‘You enjoy this,’ he said.

And Marthe, surprise and contempt in her face, said, ‘Of course.’

Unlike Francis Crawford, whose game with life was a strange and rootless affair played with the intellect, Jerott had a passionate instinct to live. It was a happy circumstance also that his nervous and bronchial systems were roughly as frail as a bison’s.

His first impression, as the effects of the blow wore off and the effects of the drug uneasily lingered, was that someone had opened his jaws and poured a ladle of boiling lead straight down his throat. His next, as he opened his eyelids with difficulty, was that, like the unchaste virgins of the Campus Sceleratus, he had been sealed alive with a light in a cave. There were caves he had heard of where a dog would die in a day because of the seeping of sulphur … except that this wasn’t sulphur so, thought Jerott prosaically, it couldn’t be hell either, thank God. He sat up, and started to cough.

He was on the cold floor of the warehouse. It was pitch black, except for a small, volatile patch of dull red in the centre of his circle of vision. Dimly pulsing, almost lightless, it revealed that the darkness was crowded with banks and pillars and avalanches of throttling grey smoke. It revealed also the dead body of Kedi, the child Khaireddin’s nurse, lying beside him. Retching and choking, Jerott flung himself on his hands and knees, and face to the ground, felt his way to the door.