Pawn in Frankincense (87 page)

Gabriel took it. He put Lymond in check to his Queen. He turned him down the board, using Bishop and Rook and, all the time, his two invulnerable pieces: his Knight and his second Bishop, which could take any square with impunity, for no one would touch them. Once, Lymond was able to move Marthe to the eighth square and for a moment to challenge Gabriel’s King, forcing him to move up the board. A little later Gabriel in turn brought down his Queen, and for an instant both Queens confronted one another, and Gabriel’s seemed at Lymond’s mercy. Then Jerott saw that Archie stood in the next diagonal to Gabriel’s King, totally vulnerable, and it seemed instead that Marthe or Archie must be lost. Lymond moved his Queen quietly to the square behind Archie, shielding him; and Gabriel abandoned it, and returned to his smooth and brilliant game.

One would imagine, thought Jerott, that in any case they were well matched: Francis Crawford and Graham Reid Malett. They both had the capacity, the imagination and the concentration which this game of all games demanded. Gabriel, the older man, perhaps possessed more experience; but Lymond’s sharp-witted mind Jerott had seen sometimes take logic and soar without explanation beyond it, on what power of intuition or inspiration or guesswork Jerott had never decided. And because the two men were on the whole evenly matched, and because of the unusually small number of
pieces, it now became obvious what should have been clear all along: that the handicap for Lymond had always been incredible; and that with the transformation of the two Pawns, it must now be too great.

None of Lymond’s team had yet been taken. But pursued by Gabriel, Lymond’s King was now driven too easily from his consorts, and the breathing-spaces he could snatch out of check in which he might make some move other than one of defence came along less and less often.

From Lymond’s voice and manner, no one could have told that the tide against him had turned. Archie’s face was unreadable but Jerott thought Marthe knew it, walking silently, straight and steady when she was required, her eyes often on Philippa, moving gently from one child to the other. Once, when Khaireddin came near her, Marthe guided him instead.

Gaultier had begun to breathe heavily. To himself, Jerott made a calm promise that if the old man broke into supplications or sobs, he would kill him with his own hand. Then he caught Archie’s eyes on the clock.

The afternoon was growing old. The mild sunlight outside the bright-coloured windows would soon drain away; and so would the strength of the drug on which all their Uves now depended. Suddenly all Jerott’s fears pooled in a moment of suffocating anger with Lymond, that he should have harboured and failed to conquer by now this essential weakness; and he began to watch Francis Crawford for the first time, with deliberate scrutiny, as with angry pain a woman might watch her false lover for the first signs of a plague.

He saw nothing. Lymond’s voice was unchanged. His hands, tucked into his over-robe, were quite invisible. His face, shadowed against the dimming light from the windows, was the colourless etching it had been from the start: pure emotionless lines drawn by needle and acid. At rest for the moment, Jerott stood between Archie and Gabriel’s Rook and watched Lymond from two squares away until, feeling it, Lymond turned. For a moment, he looked at Jerott and Archie. Then, too quietly to be overheard, he said, ‘Pray now, if you want to pray. And don’t look round.’

Don’t look round at what? Guarding his eyes, Jerott tried frantically to compose the board in his mind. Behind him was Gabriel, in the red corner-square, with one of the children, Kuzúm, just taking a new place before him, and the other, the Knight played by Khaireddin, in the Queen’s place a few squares along. Lymond, Archie and he were together, and one of Gabriel’s Rooks had shifted behind him, he remembered, to the same side as Gabriel. There was a Bishop of Gabriel’s in the same region, and his Queen somewhere there in the middle. On the far side Marthe was standing alone, where she had been for some time at the edge. He had an
impression that Gaultier, playing Lymond’s Bishop, was in a corner too, not far from Marthe and opposite that occupied by Gabriel himself.

The impression was right. Just as the thought struck him, Gaultier screamed, and Jerott whirled round. At first he thought it was perhaps checkmate, the final disaster; the locking of Lymond’s King by Gabriel so that no escape was possible and the game therefore lost. Instead he saw, face to face in opposite corners, the figures of Georges Gaultier’s Bishop and the newly arrived Kuzúm, Gabriel’s Bishop, ready to take it.

Don’t look round
, Lymond had said. Don’t look round, Jerott thought, so that Gaultier might not notice his fate; might not observe death about to cross the long line of squares there towards him. But Gaultier had observed; and Gaultier screamed and, swinging round, began uttering hoarse protestations and demands to the calm veil on the throne, which surveyed him in its turn and then lifted to look at Graham Malett. And Graham Malett laughed aloud, and said in his beautiful voice, ‘He’s a pretty sight, isn’t he? Calm him, dear Francis. Tell him that it is your move to follow, not mine. You have liberty, this time, to lead him away from the slaughter.’

The mocking voice; the cruel, pointless move were more than Jerott’s lacerated nerves could stand. His anger rose and this time exploded, not against Gabriel but Gaultier, of the loud, high-pitched voice, fastening on to his reprieve; demanding of Lymond the move which would take him away from that threatening Bishop. Jerott started to move; whether to rush at Gaultier and to fell him, or merely to shout, he hardly knew yet himself. But Lymond’s hand closed on his wrist, and held it with a pressure which squeezed it, bone to bone and muscle to muscle, as if a machine had opened and snapped shut its jaws. Then Lymond said, his voice very soft, ‘Don’t hurt him. He’s only a goat tied to a rock, to occupy our attention until Gabriel makes his next move.’

‘What move?’ said Jerott.

‘The last move,’ said Lymond, and he smiled at Gabriel as he spoke. ‘King’s Bishop to King’s fourth: checkmate in one.’

‘… You can avoid it,’ said Jerott.

‘This time,’ said Lymond. He was speaking, it seemed, less to Jerott than to himself, or to Gabriel or to some bodiless interrogator, combing his mind. ‘Next time, no.’

‘And so?’

‘And so,’ said Francis Crawford; and for the first time he lifted his eyes and looked full at Jerott. ‘Look at the board.’

Jerott turned. So did Archie and Philippa, but Gaultier did not look. He was intent on Lymond: willing Lymond to utter the words which would take him to safety, and he signed, from time to time, in his anxiety: a sigh caught with a sob. Presently even that died away,
and the profound silence in the room made itself felt: a silence which continued until Jerott himself could have shouted, or fallen down on his knees, with the ache of it. The cool triumph on Gabriel’s handsome face faded, and a shadow crossed the magnificent brow. Then he looked at Francis Crawford, and Lymond said, ‘You were too intent on your own slaughter; too ruthless; too greedy. You have pushed me until I have no alternatives left. You must take the consequences of that.’

Gabriel did not speak. But Philippa made a queer sound, suddenly, on a too-sharply intaken breath, and beside Jerott, Archie the phlegmatic, the stoical, said in a high sudden whisper, ‘
Oh
,
Christ!
Oh Christ, the bairns.’

Oh Christ, the bairns. When the orphan weeps, his tears fall into the hand of the beneficent God. Gabriel had planned it, this delicate checkmate, with Lymond’s King locked in his place, with no possibility of escape; with every possible route filled or covered by an enemy piece, or by the two children.

Or by the two children
. In his next move, the move he was never to make, Gabriel would have put Lymond’s King in check so that Lymond could free himself in one way only: by taking a child.

So Gabriel had intended. So, with all the power in his hands, he had made his delicate, malicious moves to this point, and so all the pieces around Lymond were there in position, except the second locking Bishop, whose move Lymond had forestalled.

Graham Malett had forgotten one thing. Far off, unregarded on the edge of the board, stood Lymond’s Queen, and Georges Gaultier, his own Bishop, still there in his corner. And in a straight line, from Queen and from Bishop there ran a free, shining path to each child.

In three words, Lymond could direct Marthe, his Queen, down that path to the death of Khaireddin. Or instead, he could send Gaultier, square by square, to take the Bishop played by Kuzúm. Either move would free him from all fear of checkmate. More …

Either move would checkmate Graham Malett instead
.

Oh Christ, the bairns, thought Jerott flatly. Oh Christ, one of them; Kuzúm or Khaireddin, who must now pay for the life it had never had; for the happiness it never had; for the stranger’s sin which begot it, and the stranger’s quarrel which brought it here. One life to save seven, and the horror facing Philippa as Gabriel’s mistress. One life pinched out on a harpstring, and Gabriel’s King would be locked in checkmate, as Lymond’s was to have been. One life, and Gabriel had lost for ever; had forfeited his existence and that of his men. One life, and Gabriel, here and now, in this hour, was dead.

Changeless; like the machine Jerott had felt him to be, Lymond turned in the long silence to Roxelana Sultán; and the Queen, facing him, put back her veil. A narrow, vigorous face, a small mouth and arched nose and shrewd, painted dark eyes studied him, from the
fair orderly hair to the rich scarlet robe. Lymond said, ‘High and mighty Princess … thy rules have been obeyed; thy burdens borne without protest. The game is now mine. In one move I shall claim the life of Jubrael Pasha, as you have promised, and of all those on his side save the children. I beg thy highness’s word that this will be permitted, and that my friends and I may then go free.’

‘It is so,’ said Roxelana; but Gabriel’s smooth voice, a thread of discord somewhere in its honey, said strongly, ‘Princess, what are you thinking of? Let them free, to bandy your letters from court to court, from gutter to gutter? Might they not go to the Sultan himself in the field? What tale will they tell him?’

‘A tale of a traitrous Vizier,’ said Roxelana calmly. ‘And some forged papers.… Make thy move, Hâkim.’

But Lymond did not turn away. Instead he said, in the same level voice, ‘Once, Princess, you returned, out of the delicacy of your spirit, what you could not accept without granting a favour. That which you returned is again in the care of your Treasurer and I have to beg you, a second time, to take this gift in your hands.…’

From Lymond to Roxelana, a bribe. Jerott, following every syllable and the sense of nothing, wondered bleakly what the gift was; and then saw Philippa’s face and wondered again. It would be, he supposed, with Kiaya Khátún. Roxelana said, ‘Thou art foolhardy with thy wealth. What now is the wish of thy heart?’

‘Only this,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘That when I make this move, I may let the child live.’

‘That is not the rule,’ said Roxelana Sultán calmly. ‘The rule is clear. Break it, and you lose.’

The blue eyes, searching met hers; but the dark gaze gave back nothing. Lymond said, in the same prosaic voice, ‘Then allow me to take the child’s place. I have no objections, and you might find it … convenient.’

‘Thy persistence does thee honour,’ said Roxelana blandly. ‘But the answer is no. Make thy move, or forgo it. Had a pestilence seized them this summer, the children would have suffered no less. Now you need lose only one. Choose, and move.’

From her place by Kuzúm, the light of her life, Philippa stood up. She did not say goodbye, nor did she kiss him or touch him, but moving slowly backwards she withdrew from the chessboard and stood still, her eyes on Lymond, leaving Kuzúm alone.
The shepherd clutch thee fast. O my lamb; O my lambkin …

Khaireddin had been alone for a long time, in the square next to that which Lymond had vacated to go to the throne. His smiles, which no one returned, had run dry now; and through his courage a whimper broke loose and a single tear, escaping, slipped down his cheek.

Lymond didn’t come back to the board. He stood by the Kislar
Agha, looking before him; his brightly lit face and hair an unfamiliar intaglio of highlights and unexpected sharp shadows. Still as the clock-spinet, thought Jerott, marking the hours, its case rimed with spectacular jewels; its inner wheels blindly spinning, awaiting the impersonal touch on the lever to trip it into a mechanical cascade of action. Which child to use for his checkmate? Which child to have killed?

Gabriel, rousing minute by minute from his paralysis of disbelief, cut through their thoughts. ‘Give up, Francis. How can you know what you’re doing? You don’t make decisions at low ebb. Not decisions you’ll live with in after years. Leave the children alone. I won’t checkmate you. I’ll give you stalemate in a handful of moves. Stalemate.… A draw, neither winning. You go free, and so do I.’

‘No,’ said Lymond.

‘Your vow?’ said Gabriel. ‘That means nothing either? You would have your son strangled?’

‘I don’t know,’ Francis Crawford said steadily, ‘which is my son. I do tell you this. If you are a Moslem, make your prayers. If you are a Christian, make your peace with that God. I have reached my decision.’

Jerott looked at the children, his heart in his throat. Which? The one who had experienced love and a modicum of happiness, or the one who had not. The one whose life had been innocent, or the one who had been earliest corrupted and whose first uncertain steps had just been taken towards his birthright of friendship and joy. To which would he offer the gift of survival … and how had he chosen, knowing nothing? Knowing that the dead child might be his own, and the survivor the child of Gabriel and his sister?

Lymond said, ‘
Marthe
’

The end of a baby’s life in two syllables. The direction to Marthe, his Queen, to take the Knight in her path.

And the Knight was the child who had not yet known happiness; the child Lymond had drawn to himself. The little boy called Khaireddin, with the bruises still on his body from the nightingale-dealer’s house.