Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  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.’

  9

  Gabès

  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.

  He thought his head would explode before he finally found it, eyes and nose streaming, his throat raw. The door was sealed and immovable, the bars dropped outside. He tore the carpets from both that and the windows and found that these, too, were shuttered outside. Pressing his face hard against the rough frames he tried, savagely, to wrench into his lungs some thread of wandering air which would stave off the poison a minute, two minutes longer.

  There was a trace, but only a trace: for every half-breath of life he was taking several of death. But it gave him the second he needed to think: to realize that the light represented something burning, which must be the cocoons, and that the fumes, not the fire, were intended to kill him.

  Jerott drew a last, difficult breath. Then, stumbling to where he remembered the shelves to be, he laid hands on the wood and, with a strength which drove the splinters unheeded into his hands, wrenched off two boards and, fighting straight through the smoke, thrust their ends deep into the dully burning, venomous heap.

  They wouldn’t light. He had to leave them, to reel to the window and lie there, gasping: it was one of the most appalling acts of will he had ever had to perform, to leave that window and stagger back to the fire.

  When he got there, it was to find that both planks had caught and one was almost consumed. He grasped them, careless of burns, and got them to the door. One of them, dying, went out. Jerott watched it from where he lay on the floor, nursing the other against the smooth wood of the door-leaf. It was a matter of lessening interest whether this one survived. He knew he couldn’t do it again. He felt as if the gas had somehow invaded his flesh, congesting every passage and vein in his body: his head felt expanded and solid, like that of a malformed infant; his legs were useless. It was very warm.

  His hand dropped, and his eyes closed.

  A burning fragment of wood, falling on his wrist, stung him awake. Remotely irritated, Jerott looked up. A sheet of brilliant gold towered above him. His clothes were singed, his arm blistered, as the door roared into nothingness and, above his head, the roof began to crackle and spit. And flinching back from the fire, wincing, backing, recoiling, the fumes from the silk were retreating before the seeping, the stirring, the rushing of incoming sweet air.

  He was caught very quickly, once he got out, by the regular patrol from the castle. Jerott himself did not care whose prisoner he was: he must, somehow, have managed to accuse the silk-farmer for when he woke up, momentarily, as they were entering the castle, he heard the Syrian’s voice, protesting volubly, beside him. Then he fainted again.

  He woke in prison. At first, shivering with cold and the pain of his burns, Jerott could distinguish nothing in the reeking darkness but a dim square, which seemed to be a small barred window giving on to the night. He lay on wet earth, and the walls, as he rolled over and touched them, were unplastered and damp. This was near the sea then; probably a room under the Governor’s castle.… They had found out, then, that he was from the Dauphiné and therefore an enemy. Then he remembered that of course they had found out: it was the first thing the Syrian would tell them. It was why his death was to have been arranged, recognizable and intact, by asphyxiation. In Mehedia, a Frenchman was an enemy. The manner of his dying could be published, as Gabriel would want it published, with no danger to the Syrian’s safety at all.

  It was as far as Jerott reached with his thinking. His teeth chattering, his throat half closed, his eyes shut against the blinding pain in his head, he slipped back almost immediately into unconsciousness and lay unmoving once more.

  The next time, he had no wish to wake. When the inconsiderate agency vibrating his shoulder and the persistent soft voice failed to stop, he tried to turn over, mumbling. The voice, mellowed for a moment with laughter, said, ‘I don’t know where in God’s name you picked up such language, Jerott. Wake up, will you? You’re going to be all right, but you’ve got to listen to me.’

  It was Francis Crawford. Opening his eyes, frowning, Jerott looked into that cool, friendly face in the half-light of dawn, and said, whispering, ‘How …?’

  ‘Bribery,’ said Lymond cheerfully. He was richly dressed, with no attempt at disguise. Releasing the prostrate man’s shoulder he laid his hand, for a moment, on Jerott’s hot brow and then without touching him further, sat back on his heels. ‘You know. If o
ne grunts, all the herd comes to help him. But your jailer would only allow me ten minutes in here. Can you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jerott.

  ‘Right. In a moment, you will be taken before the Governor. Admit everything. You’re from the Dauphiné, and you’re here because you heard a European child was being held under duress for money. But this is the point. You’re not one of the embassy: you’re a Scottish Knight of St John whom we are escorting to Malta on our way farther east. You can prove that without any trouble, and if you need any help, Marthe will back you. She’s masquerading as a Florentine called Donna Maria Mascarenhas, and you’ve met her in Rome. Do you see, Jerott? Gabriel’s planning has broken down. I was meant to come to Mehedia; and if I escaped the gas, I certainly shouldn’t have eluded the soldiers. But you have a chance.’

  Desperately ill as he felt, Jerott’s brain began to work again too. He struggled to sit. ‘Yes … I understand. Francis, you must go to the house. The sister’s house where the fire was.’

  ‘I’ve been,’ said Lymond. ‘It was empty. Your fire went out of control.’ After a moment, he added, ‘I know what it was.’

  Jerott said, ‘The boy was there.’

  ‘You saw him?’ said Lymond. Then, because he had spoken too sharply and Jerott was only half conscious, he added, ‘Never mind. Tell me after. At least … tell me now if he is living.’

  Jerott said, ‘I’ve seen him. I’ve talked to his nurse. She’s dead. I found her when I woke in the fire. But there was no sign of the child.’ His headache, for one agonizing moment, threatened to overcome him completely. He added, ‘He must have gone with the Syrian’s sister.’

  His eyes on Jerott, Francis Crawford was silent. And Jerott, making one last, dragging effort, said, ‘He is beautiful, and whole, and has learned to offer the world a humble and desperate obedience. You called him a pawn. He has begun to follow his trade.’

  Lymond studied his hands. In the strengthening light Jerott saw his brows lifted, creasing, as if in habitual boredom; and his lashes flicked, once. Then with soft derision, he quoted, ‘They caught thee on the mountain and bred thee like a human being. As the water-wheel turns round and round irrigating the garden, even so do thou turn and dance.’ He looked up. ‘The Governor is a liverish gentleman, but easily impressed. You’ll be all right. Marthe and I will make an excuse to take you off with us. Can you brace yourself, Jerott, for an hour?’

  Jerott nodded. Lymond rose and surveyed him. ‘I have a thought for you. The Countess of Henneberge, when aged forty-two, gave birth to three hundred and sixty-five children on a single occasion. Thank God neither you nor I ever happened to meet her.’ And walking to the door, he called the jailer, smiled, and a moment later, unobtrusively, had gone.

  In going, obviously, he had made further provisions with the warder. Between that time and his appearance two hours later before the Governor, Jerott was given a candle, and then some warm water and linen with which, painfully, he managed both to improve his appearance and to bind up the worst of his burns. When, finally, they brought him a dish of rank heated milk and a cake of coarse bread, he had stopped shivering, and although his stomach nearly rejected it, he managed to finish it all, and felt in the end almost ready to face what lay ahead.

  It was as well. The Governor, as Lymond had promised, was an irascible military gentleman with a town house in Barcelona and a hunting-lodge, which he was missing, just outside Madrid. He disliked Syrians, despised the trade of the Syrian’s sister, but had obviously in the past received too many secrets through both channels to be fastidious about either now. Jerott, walking past rows of helmeted henchmen in polished breastplates and Spanish stuffed breeches, looked at the quilted satin and perfumed black beard of the Governor behind his fine, Gothic desk, and thought of all the Knights of St John he had disrelished most. Ignoring the Syrian completely, he came to a halt and, looking down his splendid nose, addressed the Governor, coldly, in Spanish.

  ‘Is it for this,’ said Jerott Blyth contemptuously, ‘that I fought and my brothers died on your ramparts three years ago, to save you this city? I hardly think, sir, that you carried a sword in that action, or you would scarcely throw one of my Order unheard into a dungeon. I hope, sir, that you will have an explanation that will satisfy the Grand Master and your master the Emperor, for none will satisfy me.’

  The Governor glanced at Jerott and spoke to his secretary, hovering over his shoulder. ‘The rogue speaks Spanish. I have no time for all this. Translate to the Syrian.’ And, twitching the black silken moustache: ‘The fellow reeks of the prison.’ To Jerott, he said, ‘Step back three paces. You offend us.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Jerott. ‘I intend to be still more offensive before this interview is over. And I have still to receive your answer. Is this how you treat a Knight of the Order of St John?’

  ‘Bey Efendi!’ said a round, placatory voice. ‘Bey Efendi, I beg thee!’ It was the Syrian, addressing the Governor. ‘Himself, this man has told me. He is of the French party on board the Dauphiné, the French Envoy’s ship. He is a spy, Lord, who entered Mehedia to deceive thee, concealed in my poor sister’s warehouse. How can such a one be of this illustrious Order? He seeketh to trick thee.… Is this a Lord, upon whose head the he-fox makes water?’ And shrivelling suddenly at a warning glare from the secretary, the silk-farmer stopped and wrung his soft hands.

  Red in the face, the Governor was staring at Jerott, and although he ignored the Syrian totally, Jerott knew that in a moment something or someone would require to pay the price for that affront to his dignity. ‘You say that you are a Knight of St John and not the Comte de Sevigny, the Special Envoy of France. It is simple. Prove it,’ said the Governor.

  ‘Of course. If you insist,’ Jerott said. ‘It might have been better, you understand, if you had insisted before casting me into prison.…’

  It was not hard. The vows, in Latin and Spanish, of the Knights Hospitallers came even now pat to his tongue. I vow to God, to St Mary, ever a virgin, Mother of God, to St John the Baptist to render henceforth and for ever, by the grace of God …

  They came pat, the vows he had rejected. They came pat, too, the names of his colleagues, the account he could make of every house and Langue of Birgu, the history he could tell of the battle three years before by which the Knights with their friends had taken Mehedia for Charles. Sly as the recidivist; false as the renegade at the stake, he had invoked the Order he had forsaken, to save his own skin.…

  Blocking all such thoughts from the mind, he ended. ‘My name is Jerott Blyth. Check any scroll and you will find it. And be sure, when I am landed on Malta, I shall report all that has happened, omitting nothing.’

  He had the Governor’s attention now. The Governor, a little pale under the fashionable cap and the brushed beard, was saying, ‘This sounds … It is true, what you say cannot be fabricated.… But I still cannot understand … Is there,’ said the Governor, reaching a final, awful decision, ‘any soul in this city whom we might call before us to identify you?’

  It was the one question Jerott had feared. There was, he was tolerably sure, more than one soul in this city who would recognize him all right—as a former Knight of St John who had obtained release from his vows. There remained only, he realized, the alternative that Lymond in his damnable efficiency had already suggested. Jerott said, ‘I imagine the city is fairly full of friends or acquaintances. The only one I can mention for certain—and I trust you will not dream of disturbing her—is the Lady Maria Mascarenhas, whom I was in hopes of encountering as she passed through. Her parents are old friends of my family’s. But of course——’

  ‘Señor Blyth,’ said the Governor. ‘La señora is here. If you will give yourself the trouble of sitting, I shall call her. Señor, I begin to see … I begin to fear … You will take a little wine?’

  ‘It might help the situation,’ said Jerott. ‘A trifle.’

  It was perhaps a mistake, for when the door opene
d on Marthe, he somehow expected the Marthe of the caravan, in boy’s tunic and breeches, with her hair pushed out of sight in her cap. So stupidly, through the haze of weakness and wine, he did not at first recognize the tall girl whose glittering hair was banded with pearls, and whose borrowed bodice and farthingale in tight-sleeved black velvet and gauzes of white silk and spangles recalled the few untroubled days of his life when, neither praying nor fighting, he had feasted and danced slow dances at court, and had met and vowed to spend his life with Elizabeth. ‘Signor Blyth!’ said Marthe; and, drifting smiling towards him, gave him her hand and a lift of her fair brows that was the very echo of someone else. ‘Caro mio, but how you smell! Where are your chains? I was told you had been deservedly imprisoned … tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, my dear. I always distrusted so much religion.’ And reaching up, the deep blue eyes sparkling, she kissed him, English fashion, on the cheek.

  Through the hammer-strokes of his heart, which appeared to him to be visible, Jerott said calmly, ‘Maria, I require your testimony, so don’t, I pray you, consider my faith as a handicap. Merely confirm to His Excellency that in fact it exists. He doubts my identity.’

  She made a face, floating deliciously into a chair. ‘I doubt it too, when you smell in this fashion. What do you wish me to say?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Jerott patiently. ‘If it please you, Maria. Tell the Governor who I am.’

  She made a pretence of considering. ‘What was the name now? I have such a memory. Smeet? Gonzales?’

  ‘Maria’

  The Governor laughed merrily, his face a light shade of green. ‘I fear the Duquesa knows only too well. Señor, how can I begin …?’

  ‘No, no!’ said Marthe. ‘You must not tell me! What could it have been! Tay-lor? Killi-grew? Robert-son?’ The distinguished, wide-browed face laughed, and then was swept clean of laughter. ‘You are hurt!’