Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Jerott, sweat trickling down his dark face, didn’t look round. He paid no attention to Marthe or to Gaultier: he was beyond caring about Onophrion’s hovering bulk or Salablanca’s sober, lingering stare. He had ceased too to glance at the pavilion where Lymond was sitting, totally relaxed with gentle abandon, the weight of his brow on his knuckles. Jerott stood up.

  There were some insults lightly bandied in Islam, and a few more lying between those and matters answerable only by death. Taking the offensive, middle course, Jerott Blyth called to the riders, and as they pursued their concentrated courses, ignoring him, he bent and, again picking up cushion after cushion, hurled them into the arena with the very evident object of causing what mischief he could.

  Misconduct of that order was not likely to be overlooked a second time. Jerott looked over his shoulder, saw the guards converging on him and, heaving a last unforgivable missile, walked out weaving into the arena himself. Lymond looked up.

  Jerott could hardly have chosen a more exquisite moment. The horses were racing in couples, a single rider erect with one foot on each. Before the mark, bow in hand, each had to let fly three arrows into the wand: past the mark, each had to turn, keeping his balance on the two lumbering horses, and shoot, with accuracy, three arrows more.

  Two did so and, finding Jerott straying noisily at their feet, swerved and passed him. The third, with more time to consider, threw away his bow and snapped his fingers, glancing behind him. The rider behind drew abreast. For a matter of seconds, the four horses thundered side by side. Then, releasing one of his horses, the second rider balanced on the remaining bare back, and then lightly jumped the intervening space between it and the next. For a moment the two riders stood, and then sat side by side. The next moment they had swept up to Jerott. He felt a hard hand under each armpit; a jerk that almost displaced his shoulder-blades, and then he was hurtling backwards through the air between the galloping horses, his heels jarring and bumping, and hazily aware that if either of the two riders holding him chose a course which diverged from his fellow, then there were really no working alternatives. He would split.

  In the Aga Morat’s pavilion, Francis Crawford, with some trouble, stood up. ‘Christ,’ he said vaguely. ‘It’s Jerott.’

  ‘It is, indeed,’ said Kiaya Khátún. And as the Aga, black-faced, turned to his guards: ‘No—leave it, my lord Aga. If you will. Let us see what sport they make of poor Mr Blyth.’

  As a spectacle, the chastisement of poor Mr Blyth already looked promising. He had had the sense, largely because he was stone cold sober, to lift his feet from the ground so that he hung, a dead weight, from the arms of his captors as he was swept backwards between them. Then, finding this wearing, as he had hoped, one of them called out aloud.

  There was an answering shout from behind him. He had just time to realize that the riders on either side of him were about to overtake, between them, a third horse, when the powerful arms holding him began swiftly to lift him, higher and higher. They released him; and with a thud that drove the breath from his body he dropped, reversed, into a third person’s saddle.

  The horse he was now on was racing like hell. Checking his first impulse to somersault over its tail, he got on with the job of turning right way round in the saddle. It was a hilarious business, according to the shouting and laughter around him, and he slipped a couple of times for good measure. The bearded figure of his rider, grinning, paid no attention whatever to the scrambling behind him but reaching the mark, shot coolly three times, then, leaning down, ungirthed his saddle.

  It was a dirty trick. With horses occupied and riderless thundering around him, Jerott felt the saddle beginning to slide: as the leathers came in sight he flung himself, knees working, on his stomach across the horse’s spine and crooked his arms over its flank. The rider, posed on the slipping saddle, had his eyes on a riderless horse just approaching: as it drew level, he smiled at Jerott in a derisory flash of white teeth and, abandoning the sinking ship, jumped.

  Jerott, whose vanity was suffering, got one arm free and snatched. He was too late to stop him. With accuracy and ease the rider alighted, smiling, on the back of the next galloping horse, balanced a moment, and then sat in the saddle, an expression of distrust on his face. Between himself and Jerott Blyth, careering bareback on the neighbouring horse, flew, unreeling, twenty yards of white muslin, as, like an old wife at her spindle, Jerott unwound his turban.

  Havoc ensued. Whooping, kicking his heels, he brought down four horses, darting off at an angle with the tightening streamer before the turbanless Arab finally shot off his horse in a tangle of cane frame and felt cap, exposing to Mohammed, untimely, his single-lock handgrip to heaven.

  Jerott looked round. It had not perhaps been wise. For a Moslem to bare his head was shame; to have it done for him by a Christian was serious injury. He reduced his horse’s speed for a moment, thinking, as the other riders, in numbers, began to ride hard towards him. He still had the end of the turban, wrapped several times round his hand.

  With the rest of it lying coiled on the grass, it was now useless. He was beginning to unwind it when it tightened. ‘Well done, Brother Blyth,’ said Lymond’s voice, clear and carefree as he had heard it so many times, in action, at home with his company. ‘First round to God and St Andrew. May I play?’

  Bare-headed and coatless, he stood on the sand, laughing at Jerott. Then, the other end of the muslin wound round his wrist, he turned and, running hard, laid his hand on a loose horse and vaulted into the saddle. With the reins in his hand: ‘All right,’ said Lymond. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘He’s drunk. He’ll kill himself,’ said the Aga Morat, grumbling.

  ‘Let him go,’ said Kiaya Khátún, for the second time. ‘Horsemanship to these men is second nature. They will provide a spectacle and no doubt will receive a suitable drubbing. Humility is a virtue Scotsmen require to be taught.’

  Jerott, well fed, well rested, fully recovered from his fever, was a natural horseman, with the horseman’s broad shoulders and strong, capable hands. The beautiful little Arabian mare between his knees answered him like a polo pony: horse and man might have been one as, his eyes on Lymond, he swerved and galloped as he sensed Lymond intended. They used the twisted turban between them as a trip-rope until it parted, slashed by a scimitar. Jerott, escaping from that, was knocked flying by a usurping body landing on the rump of his horse: twisting, he landed hard on the ground on his shoulder and, rolling over, staggered unhurt to his feet. In the middle of the next course a performer, standing elegantly on his head, saw Jerott racing towards him and tried, too late, to recover. As Jerott’s hard body hit him he heeled over with grace into the mark, and Jerott settled, happily, into his place.

  That horse had a bow at the pommel. ‘An advance, my boy,’ said Jerott. ‘Now for some arrows.’

  It was Lymond, with six men on his tail, who leaned down from his stirrups like an acrobat and scooped two from the piled heap of quivers. He threw one to Jerott, nocked, and raced belly to ground for the mark, sending a stream of arrows into the target: as he reached it a man with a staff rode straight at him, and struck. Before he got there, Lymond was out of the saddle. The pole struck empty air, pulling its owner out of the stirrups, and Lymond, dropped under the girth like a spider, swung himself in the same movement into the saddle again, laughing, his hair tangled and soaking with exertion.

  It had been a boy’s trick, Jerott remembered. Standing bareback on your father’s horses; somersaulting, chariot-riding. Francis, buried in books, had never publicly attempted it. What private practice, Jerott wondered fleetingly, had gone into that? Then he was under attack himself, a racing horse on either side, and a hand grasping his reins.

  Kicking his stirrups free, cautiously, Jerott got to his feet. A hand flashed to his ankles. In the same second, jumping sideways, he landed first on the back of the third horse, and then, neatly, on the back of its rider. He dug his hands and feet in.

  It is remarkably difficult to
dislodge a man sitting astride your shoulders when riding full out. Provided he clings, if he falls he cannot fail to fall with you too. Faced with that dilemma, the horseman between Jerott’s legs gritted his teeth and tried to feel for his scimitar. Jerott kicked it out of his reach and, closing his hands, gave him a friendly squeeze in the windpipe. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lymond’s horse, too, was racing up.

  In a moment’s dazzling revelation he saw, as well, what he intended to do. ‘You bloody fool!’ shrieked Jerott, and then hung on for grim death as Lymond, galloping neck and neck, loosed his reins, calculated and, standing, jumped first on to Jerott’s horse and then, with the same momentum, on to Jerott’s own back. For a fearful moment, the pyramid swayed; and then, settling, held firm as the horse, trained to a regular pace, settled again into its stride. Three men high, the assemblage swept down the course, and among the shouting they had been too busy to hear came, without question, a scattering of applause. Below him, Jerott felt the Arab look up. ‘Thou wouldst make sport, Efendi?’

  Looking down, breathless, from above Jerott, Lymond answered. ‘We only make sport.’

  ‘Thou wilt try the swords, Efendi?’

  ‘Hell——’ began Jerott, and was cut off by Lymond. ‘We’ll try anything. Call the others off, will you? Jerott, you take one horse and I’ll have the other.’ He dismounted with credit while they were still moving, with two neat somersaults, from the horse to the ground, and Jerott, with success, did the same. The other riders, pattering up, dismounted: there was an air of less than kindly expectancy. Jerott said to Lymond in English, ‘My God: do you know what you’re …’ and broke off as two horses were led up. They were saddled, and fixed to the saddle on each side, erect and cutting-side inwards, were three razor-sharp swords.

  ‘What better?’ said Lymond. ‘We have the field to ourselves. They will be at this end, and we shall be at the other, escaping.’

  ‘Through the guards?’ inquired Jerott sarcastically.

  ‘I thought,’ said Lymond reflectively, ‘through the back wall of the Aga Morat’s pavilion. Keep your elbows in, Brother.’ And with extreme care, he mounted, and took bow and quiver.

  Jerott looked at his horse. He had to mount, sit between those six vertical blades and, riding at full gallop, shoot at the mark, three times on approaching and three times turning, after he had gone by. He visualized that turn, flexing his shoulders. All right; it put them in possession of swords. They even had a bow each and a quiver of arrows. They had, as Lymond said, the field to themselves with no other horseman ready to shoot or to strike.

  But they were also making straight for the Aga Morat’s pavilion, on either side of which his turbaned guard stood, hedging all the back of the crowd, knife and scimitar ready. Escape on any other side of the square was impossible, the crowd was too thick. Escape of any kind, to the Aga Morat’s mind, was presumably unthinkable, as long as they did what they were assumed to be doing: putting up a performance. That meant that, swords or not, he had to shoot, or do his damned best to shoot, until the last moment. He became aware that from the glittering cage of his saddle, Lymond was watching him. Jerott said, matter-of-factly, ‘I think you’re out of your mind,’ and, lifting himself into the saddle, took up his bow.

  They rode side by side on the disembowelled sand, among the discarded arrowheads and the splintered litter of display: a fragment of turban-cotton, pinned by a dart, trembled in the late afternoon breeze from the sea. In the west, against the rubicund sun, the green valance of palm trees was turning to fretwork and a pitch torch, lit somewhere high in the palace, caught Jerott’s eye with its flame. Marthe, her long-sighted eyes on the two men, spoke, murmuring to her uncle. ‘They are not drunk.’

  Georges Gaultier, his eyes fixed on the arena, replied without turning round. ‘It is not possible. You saw what Blyth drank here alone.’

  ‘It wasn’t harech,’ said Marthe.

  Gaultier turned. ‘He was stinking of it. I tasted some on my hand when the cup spilt.’

  ‘The first cup,’ said Marthe. ‘The container held only water.’

  Georges Gaultier continued to look at her. ‘Then?’

  ‘Then they plan to escape. It is none of our business,’ said Marthe. ‘He will go to Aleppo.’

  ‘And we?’

  ‘We shall go to Aleppo too. Why should they keep the Dauphiné when its patron has gone?’

  ‘You are right. She will not hurt you,’ said Gaultier. ‘Zitwitz and the Moor must take their chance.’

  Jerott was nocking his arrow. Onophrion, he thought. What happens to Onophrion and Salablanca if Francis walks out? Or whatever happens, perhaps it’s worth it, to save the fleet from Malta.… He had calculated the only angle at which he could draw his bow safely between the blades of the swords. Once he began to shoot, he had to repeat it exactly, twice, changing his aim. Then he had to turn in his saddle. He would face that when he came to it.…

  Jerott drew back his arm. His horse was tired. He kicked it on and got the mark in his eye, his fingers tightening, just as it came to him why this escape was necessary … why nothing and no one would be allowed to stand now between Francis Crawford and whatever was about to happen at Zuara.…

  It was because Gabriel would be there.

  In the Aga Morat’s pavilion, no one spoke. Side by side, the two horsemen approached the heap of sand with the mark, now a little askew, and not so plain in the low-slanting sun. Lymond shot first, his arm in its white sleeve brushing back into the steely interstice once, twice and a third time; before he stopped, Jerott had begun. Watching, Kiaya Khátún thought she saw the point of a blade stir as he shot; but it was true; as true as Lymond’s, and, without pausing, he shot twice more and then smoothly twisted and let fly again, backwards, passing the mark. Kiaya Khátún heard the shout which told that Lymond had completed his six shots, and then, under her gaze, Jerott also released his sixth and last arrow and the shout rose again. He was smiling.

  Lymond, glancing across at him briefly, did not smile. Slackening speed, he had slung his bow and one by one, deftly, had disengaged the swords from his saddle. They flashed and fell, clapping, dancing, pirouetting, until there was only one left in his hand. Then, assuming that Jerott was doing the same, Lymond gathered his reins and set his horse straight at the centre of the Aga Morat’s tent.

  Güzel saw him coming. Before the Aga, she was on her feet, stumbling on the cushions: she had hardly moved a yard before the horse was among them, and Lymond, slithering down from the saddle, had gripped her and flung her on the mare’s back. She curled like an eel, sliding over and down to escape on the other side when Jerott, still mounted, grasped and bodily held her. Then Lymond in the saddle again thrust her before him and, slitting with the point of his sword through the screen of silk backing the tent, lowered his head and burst through, Jerott following.

  Crushed side-saddle in front of him, her head under his chin, her fists gripping his waist, Güzel heard the uproar about them; the Aga Morat’s scream; the pounding of feet and the shouts of the guards. Arrows flicked into the sand, but not too close: they had realized, she thought, that to shoot might mean killing Dragut Rais’s mistress. And no one within two hundred yards had a mount.… She said, ‘You will never get over the causeway.’

  ‘We are not going to the causeway,’ said Lymond. And indeed, he was driving his horse north, past the palace, leaving the dusky sky on their left. North, to the sands and the sea.

  ‘You have a ship?’

  ‘We have a ship,’ agreed Lymond. ‘You will not sail on her. You will remain in a safe place until the Aga Morat agrees to our terms: to release the Dauphiné and allow her to sail with all our company, our money and our furnishings quite unharmed. He will do it. He has no desire to offend Dragut Rais.’ He twisted round then speaking quickly to Jerott; changed direction and moved on to grass.

  We are out of sight, she said to herself. And he is throwing them off the trail. Against her cheek he was breathing deeply and
regularly: she could have counted the beats of his heart; quicker than hers, after all his exertion; but perfectly steady. She said, shifting a little, ‘I have no desire to offend Dragut Rais either. Turn back.’ And with the little knife from her sleeve she slit the silk over his heart, and the linen beneath it, and held it there, point down. She could see her veiled face in the blade.

  His heart-beat did not alter. ‘Jerott would shoot you.’

  ‘But not before the knife has gone home. Turn back.’

  ‘To allow the Aga Morat to knife me?’

  ‘He will not touch you,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘We have orders only to keep you for a limited time.’

  ‘Until after Zuara,’ said Lymond.

  For a moment Güzel was silent. Then: ‘You know?’ she said. With her free hand, sitting erect, she dropped the veil from her face: her grip on the knife did not waver. Then she looked up and saw the mockery plain in his eyes. ‘Wasn’t I meant to know?’ he said. ‘I thought that was the whole intention.’

  Her brown eyes narrowed. ‘Nothing must jeopardize the Aga Morat’s counter-attack.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lymond. ‘The Knights’ attack on Zuara must fail. But equally, they must realize the cause of their failure. Islam has perceived, has it not, that Graham Reid Malett cannot be of use to it much longer as a Knight of St John. Once his treachery is exposed to his fellow Knights he has no alternative. Spain, France, Scotland, England are all closed to him. Only the Ottoman world is left open. And there he will go.’

  ‘So it is hoped,’ said Güzel. ‘Turn and ride back.’

  Francis Crawford reined in. Under her knife she saw his shirt reddened where the blade had fretted, a little, with the movement of riding. He said, ‘Kiaya Khátún, the peaches of immortality ripen only once every three thousand years. Sooner or later we die. If it happens to me here and now, nothing will alter. Only Mr Blyth will do what has to be done.’