Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
‘Another man,’ said the boy sullenly. ‘The groom in the stables.’
‘I see. So the decoy party will have reached home quite unmolested, and the welcoming party will be looking out, not for them, but for this lady and myself on foot? What is the groom’s name, and who is he paid by?’
‘His name is Jérôme. He is paid by the same three. There are some of us in the employment of many merchants. The couple Blyth know nothing,’ the boy said. ‘Let me go. Let me go! They will kill me.’
‘I’m afraid they will,’ said Lymond thoughtfully. ‘How many of them are there?’
‘Many. Very many,’ the boy said. He was gasping.
‘Where?’
‘Hereabouts,’ said the boy Paul desperately. ‘Let me go! I don’t want the girdle.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Lymond, ‘you’re going to need it, my friend, to escape with.’ He lifted his sword, and laying the edge against the child’s bond, quickly severed it. Then, gripping Paul’s arm, he spoke in English. ‘Give him the pearls. He won’t want to share those with anyone.’
Philippa gave Paul the pearls. He snatched them, his eyes veering to Lymond’s hard hand on his shoulder. Lymond lifted it, and the child bolted.
‘A total vindication for Danny Hislop,’ Philippa said shakily.
‘Undoubtedly, if you expected me to kill him,’ said Lymond. ‘Are you as tired as you look?’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Philippa said, with a venom sluggish with weariness. ‘You want us to traboule through to the quayside and swim the Saône to the Côte de la Baleine, from which we clamber over the Petit Palais roof to your lodging.’
‘You’ve been listening to Jerott,’ said Lymond absently. Philippa followed his gaze into the smoky vapour at the neck of the street. Through it, black against the faint incandescence of invisible lamplight, appeared the spoked carcass of an overturned wagon. Within its pattern something moved, and sharpened in outline. Two men, advancing.
Philippa turned, her hood sweeping back. Fog swirled at the mouth of the rue de Chalamon, blemished with random shadows. The shadows turned from ashen to charcoal and then, moving and shouting, to black. She said, ‘There are two men behind us as well.’
The arched mouth of a traboule lay just beside them. Lymond looked at her then, his sword drawn, his eyes smiling, his hood also fallen back from his hair, since there was no longer any point in concealment. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Do what I tell you. No one is going to harm you.’
With four men rushing upon them and another, no doubt, at the other end of the tunnel, the carefree voice might have seemed ludicrous. But Philippa’s heart, oddly, lifted; her tiredness vanished and she returned his smile, unshadowed and fleeting as his hand closed on her arm and he drew her, in a single, silent rush, into the arched passage under the building.
The fog streamed in with them: past closed doors and shuttered windows to the foot of a narrow staircase; a grille and a plangent statue of St Peter, his key-holding hand lit by an oil lamp. Behind that, another lightening of the darkness suggested a courtyard to one side with a lanthorn in it. And beyond that, unrelieved darkness again.
A little whistle from pursed lips sounded suddenly from the traboule arch they had just left behind them. And almost immediately an identical whistle answered, from the darkness at the other end of the tunnel.
‘Damn!’ said Lymond cheerfully, and released her. In one liquid series of movements, he removed and draped his cloak on the statue. In another, he rehung the lamp swiftly behind it, and retrieving his poniard placed it among the stony keys. Point outwards, it glimmered there dully.
‘I’m going to delay them,’ he said, ‘while you explore the courtyard.
‘The man in the moon drinks claret
The huntsmen whoop and hallowe
Ringwood, Royster, Bowman, Jowler,
All the chase now follow.’
Philippa said, ‘I used to be rather good with a peashooter. There’s Ringwood.’
A shadowy figure appeared at the mouth of the traboule. ‘And Royster,’ said Lymond. He had vanished into an alcove opposite the dim silhouette of