Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘Let’s just try it and see.’

  He sounded not unfriendly and perfectly rational. Except that Jerott knew that he could not trust from one second to the next what he would do.

  The house to which Oonagh O’Dwyer had been sold, with her baby, was little more than a huddle of sheds, the holes pegged over with hides and stuffed with plasterings of straw. Hens ran, squawking, as the two mules came upon it in the dark, climbing a rocky path between short, wind-twisted trees; and skirting the broken mud walls of a plantation of corn or barley or anonymous vegetables. The green leaves which made the drug kif were also grown in those hills, Jerott knew. He had smelt the sickly tang of the hashish in the souks as they walked, and he smelt it again now, clinging to the sour hides of the building, and mixed with the smoke of a cow-dung fire.

  A cur, whose hysterical barking had attended all the last of their journey, came headlong towards them, and hurtled, teeth bared, at the throat of one of the mules. It died, on Lymond’s sword, before Jerott had his own half pulled out. Then Lymond, dismounting, walked across to the ramshackle building, sword in hand, and ripped the hide door-curtain off.

  If it had occurred to him that here was another trap, and with a deadlier welcome awaiting him, he took no precautions. Jerott, his sword out, his hand holding Lymond’s mule and his own, saw him stand barring the threshold, the stink of cow-fat and ordure and human neglect surging out with the smoke-clouds.

  Inside there was only an old man, his head sunk on his knees, and two women, perhaps mother and daughter, their hands knotted; their faces grained with dirt and malnutrition; poverty and long overwork. In the fitful light of their fire their features showed, resigned to command and brutality; answering with beaten silence Lymond’s string of staccato questions in Arabic. Beside Jerott, the felt-capped man on the mule bit his lip.

  Then Lymond, turning, addressed Jerott curtly in English. The next moment, driven by the flat of Jerott’s sword, the mule with the felt-capped man on its back jerked and, blundering forward, plunged through the doorway of the shack and shook off its burden. The mule, backing, stood shivering in the doorway beside Jerott while the felt-capped man lay writhing on the dirt floor at the feet of the women.

  There was no need to ask whether they knew him. As they knelt beside him, wailing and muttering, Lymond lifted his sword, and placing it point down on the prone man’s bare, bloodstained chest, said in Arabic again, ‘Now I will have my questions answered, or he dies in his place.’

  Looking from the lined faces of the women to the man on the floor, his sweating face grey under the brown, his oiled black hair covered with filth, Jerott knew that whether he was a son, a brother, a husband, loved or hated, he was the breadwinner in that house and they could not afford to let him die. And indeed, it was the old man, lifting eyes glazed with drugs, who said, ‘She was cheap, he said; and there was no one to carry water after the last child died. But she could not carry water, and that smooth face was no use to my handsome son, and she was dear; dear.’

  ‘But thou hadst gold for the woman’s own child?’ said Lymond. His voice was both clear and impersonal.

  The old man said, ‘A little, long since gone. One came to buy the child, that is true. But what of the money for the woman? My son hears that some Hâkim offers a fortune for the woman alive, and the woman writes some words for my son to bear to this Hâkim when he comes, to tell him she is safe and well. Next day, they say, he will come.…’ The cracked voice hesitated.

  ‘Well?’ said Lymond.

  ‘When we returned from the fields, the woman was dead. Killed by her own hand. What are we to do?’

  The passionless voice continued. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘He came again. He who had arranged for us to sell the child. He offered a sum—a paltry sum, but what could we do? The woman was dead—for my son to deliver the message to the Hâkim as if nothing had happened; and he took the woman away.’

  ‘Who was this man?’ said Lymond.

  Then, for the first time, the man on the floor raised his head; and Jerott saw in his eyes the kind of snarling courage he had seen a moment before in the eyes of the cur outside. ‘His name was Shakib, Efendi,’ he said. ‘The Efendi killed him this evening, in the streets of the town.’

  In that bloodbath by the wall. My God, thought Jerott. He’s killed the only man who can tell him about the child, if that’s true. If it was true.

  Lymond’s voice was gentle. The sword, pressing a little, had driven a beaded runnel of blood over the man’s breastbone. ‘But is that truly so?’ he said. ‘How may I tell?’

  ‘It is true!’ The younger of the two women suddenly screamed. ‘It is so! When the camel-trader last came, Shakib bought the boy-child from us—the robber! The thief!—And sold him again, for much gold, to the other. Then last night he comes, and says, “Give me the white woman’s body.” … ’

  Her voice died, but Lymond’s voice, addressing her, remained cold and soft. ‘Why should he do that? Was someone in turn paying him?’

  They looked at one another. Then the man on the floor, his lips twisted, said, ‘The same who paid Dragut Rais. It was a jest. The instructions came from him who spoke with the Prophet Mohammed. The Archangel Gabriel.’

  There was a little pause. Then: ‘Tell me this last thing,’ said Lymond carefully. ‘The name of the camel-trader who bought the child, and how I may find him?’

  But the old man simply stared at him, and the two women shook their heads; and the man on the floor, looking up at the sword and the still face above it, bared his teeth and said, ‘For that you must needs ask Shakib, Efendi, and Shakib, alas, cannot reply.’

  He had no hope, Jerott saw, as he grinned into Lymond’s shadowy face. Only the same guts as the dog. He died, the rictus still on his face, as Lymond drove the sword home with a jerk and then, wrenching it out, turned on his heel. The screaming of the women followed him into the night as he rammed the stained blade into its sheath and, putting his foot into the stirrup, swung into the mule’s saddle, stained and sticky as well with the blood of the man who had bought Oonagh O’Dwyer to share his straw like a goat in a hut, and who had helped to bring her, in the end, to sit in that kiosk in Dragut Rais’s garden.

  The women Lymond had not touched. These coarse, dirt-patterned hands, Jerott thought, had handled and fed that small child, who had crawled in that dirt and lain breathing that foul, drug-laden air. Beyond his whereabouts, Lymond had asked nothing about him; and Jerott thought he understood why. Tonight, he found it too easy to kill.

  Outside, it had started to rain. Far to the right, glimpsed intermittently through rocks and trees as they picked their way through the stones and the mud, glimmered the lights of the Kasbah, and the occasional pricking of light from the upper streets of Algiers, on the slopes of its hill. Otherwise the night was quite black, and the uneven paths scoring the hillside, twisting downhill to the invisible sea and joining village to village between the scattered gardens and castles and mosques, had to be traced by sound in the dark, and by the aid of those few distant lights.

  The two men rode without speaking. God knew, Jerott thought, Francis Crawford had cause to be silent. And it was obvious that, on this open hillside in a land full of enemies, silence and darkness were their only defence. He listened, straining, against the rustle of the wind and the creak of the saddles and the mules’ tapping feet. There was nothing. But bare feet made no sound; and men who were desperate for food and who knew every pitch of the hills would soon overthrow two strangers, however well armed.

  And now Gabriel had had his revenge. Gabriel, not Fate, had seen to their safety as far as that wintry garden of Dragut Rais’s and Gabriel had made sure that Lymond would reach the shack they had just left. From the fastnesses of Malta, through heaven knew what agent, Gabriel had planned for his enemy this gross humiliation: this ultimate hurt. In the darkness beside him, Lymond suddenly spoke, so à propos that it startled him.

  ‘If you ar
e interested, I think we shall be allowed to reach the ship safely, normal hazards apart.’

  For a moment Jerott rode in silence, the rain running in beads round his hood. Then he said bluntly, ‘I only hope that you’re wrong.’

  ‘How perspicacious of you, Jerott.’ Lymond, following his own thoughts, reacted merely from habit. ‘No. We are on the hook; and now we are going to be played. This is only the beginning.’

  For a long time Jerott tried to say nothing. But in the end, as without event they again approached the postern and Lymond poured the coins ready from his pouch, Jerott said, ‘But try and remember … it is Gabriel’s doing. All these men are only tools.’

  The money chinked. They were through, and into the dark, unlit souks. As they began to pick their way down to the harbour: ‘But without such tools, none of this would have happened,’ Lymond remarked.

  And still the years with the Order would not be denied. ‘But, Francis … you take these killings on your soul.’

  His answer was sharp and immediate. ‘I shall act as I please,’ said Lymond, ‘until I am … satisfied. Meanwhile … I wonder if you were right——Look out!’

  It was the sound of the rain, Jerott discovered afterwards, which had warned him: the infinitesimal changes in impact as it hit upon wool and felt and leather and steel somewhere close: somewhere round the next dark bend of the souk, where the overhanging wooden storeys raised crooked arms. Even so, it was too late. Reining hard, Jerott looked over his shoulder: the footsteps behind them were now plain to hear, advancing the way they had come; cutting off their retreat. Nor were there cross-lanes up which they might escape. Glancing at either wall, Jerott realized the ambushers had picked their site well. Solid wall, broken only by barred grilles or impassable doors, ran on either side of the souk. He looked at Lymond, and Lymond, insanely, had lashed his mule to a trot and, robe thrown off, was standing on its rump like an acrobat, arms steady; head tilted back. Then, as it passed under the overhanging buildings, he jumped.

  As far as Jerott could see, he jumped blind. But among the crossbeams and ledges of the wooden arch he must somewhere have found a finger-hold, for Jerott saw him swing free for only an instant, and then he had pulled himself up, flattened against the timber, and had turned, hand outstretched.

  By then Jerott was already on his way. Broader than Lymond and strongly made, he too had developed a physical sixth sense in tackling the unknown. He balanced perfectly on his mule’s back because he had to; and jumped; and, with Lymond’s hand to help him, scrambled upwards and then across the arch of the bridge where they flung themselves flat on the skyline, the rain beating down on their bare heads and unprotected shoulders, as the streets below filled with the steel maces, the lances, the axes and crossbows of a detachment of Janissaries. In a gesture of stupefaction, Lymond dropped his face on the wet plaster and then raised it wryly to Jerott.

  From this, Gabriel could be absolved. It was the Agha of the Janissaries, tardily returned and mad as a scolding piper on the subject of muskets, who was responsible for this sortie.

  Lying on the flat-roofed building, whatever it was, beyond the bridge, Jerott surveyed the adjoining roof levels, and conjectured on their chances of escape. No body of Janissaries, however provoked, would publicly injure an emissary of France and a guest of the Viceroy’s. They could, however, with the greatest propriety kill by accident two bloodstained foreigners in disguise who chose to greet them by streaking up walls. It was too late now to climb down side by side discussing the weather. They would receive a virtuous arrow between the shoulderblades before they set foot in the street. Jerott flinched as a sudden rush of ruddy light and a stream of black smoke told that someone had brought torches. Inching back after Lymond out of sight of the street, he rose to his feet when Lymond did, and when Lymond set off, running noiselessly, over the maze of uneven rooftops, Jerott followed.

  It might have worked. It should have worked, even in the pitch dark, with the rain beating on their heads and shoulders and backs, if one single householder hadn’t quarrelled with his wives or his mother; or hadn’t wanted somewhere to die, or to sleep off his kif. Lymond, running first, landed on a roof which should at that season and in that weather have been empty, but wasn’t. The man on whose back he landed screamed like a pig and went on screaming while Lymond rolled over and picked himself up. By the time Jerott landed as well, the alleys on each side echoed with the pad of leather buskins in the mud, and they were surrounded. In a moment, the challenge. And then the shooting would start.

  Lymond measured with his eye the distance over the street. There were no bridges here. ‘D’you think you can?’

  ‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ said Jerott; and before Lymond could stop him, he backed, ran, and jumped.

  He didn’t think, himself, that he would reach it, but surprisingly he did. He had a glimpse of movement below him but he could not be sure whether in the dark they had seen him: there were no torches there yet. His landing posture was a trifle ungainly and hurt, to be truthful, more than a bit, but he picked himself up very quickly and paused to wave brazenly to Lymond, who had already started his run. Then, turning, Jerott walked back to give the other the room he needed to land.

  At the back of the roof, where they had been sitting with the utmost patience awaiting him, a group of four men rose to their feet. Jerott opened his mouth to warn Lymond, but didn’t manage it before one of them hit him on the head, and he knew nothing more.

  The first face Jerott Blyth saw after that was a black one, which worried him a little, until his sight cleared and he saw that it was human, smiling, and turbaned. The next, beside him, was Lymond’s. He was dressed in a clean white burnous, and apart from the intangible difference which remained in his eyes, he looked both calm and unharmed. Behind his head, a lamp indicated that it must be night still, and a heavenly smell of food reminded Jerott that it must be over twelve hours since he had last eaten. He moved, and the fancy faded a little.

  ‘And how doth your gate?’ said Lymond. ‘Lie a little longer. As was said of the philosopher Chrysippus: you are only drunk in your legs. I was meant to jump over first.’

  ‘Was it the Janissaries?’ said Jerott. He had never been inside either the Kasbah or a college of Janisserotz, but this didn’t look like either. He glanced down at the mattress on which he was lying, under a light woollen blanket, and then at the fine glazed tiles in green and apricot and blue which covered the floor of the room. A brazier, placed close to him, gave out a comforting warmth, and in its light he could trace, high on the white walls, an edging of fine stucco carving, and a phrase from the Qur’ân, repeated over and over in light blue and gold. Then he brought his gaze down again, and past Lymond, and back to the smiling dark face which had bent over him in the first place. This time, he knew it.

  ‘… 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-br
ed, 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.