Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [116]
‘You stinking catamite,’ said Jerott; and with all his considerable strength launched a blow at Lymond’s face which was very genuine indeed. It was parried with an abruptness that rattled his teeth.
‘All right, Jerott,’ said Lymond levelly. Without pausing, he closed in, gripped Jerott’s arm, and against the wildest resistance managed, in two apparently smooth steps, to engineer a full wrestler’s lock on the other man. In humiliation and acute physical anguish, Jerott drew a deep breath and prepared, at the cost of a fracture, to shove. Lymond said, ‘The Maltese fleet under Strom is attacking Zuara. They’ll step into a trap: Gabriel has warned the Aga Morat.’
Jerott frowned. His face scarlet, his shirt soaked, his muscles corded with effort, he did not think of giving in. But he had stopped pushing while, breathing quickly, he said, ‘How do you know?’
‘Archie Abernethy.’
Jerott looked up. ‘How? Where is he?’
‘Break my grip and say something aloud.… He was in camp, peddling liquor, last night.’ He pulled his hand free, swearing, and Jerott, who perhaps had not meant to bite so deeply, staggered back and said, ‘Who’s going to stop me?’ for the benefit of the English-speaking spectators. Onophrion, worried, got to his feet. Jerott added, breathlessly, ‘Philippa?’
‘All I know is, she’s safe.… If you’re coming with me, listen,’ said Lymond. He ducked, and then swung a punch that did not quite go wide. ‘And then knock me out cold.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Jerott. His dark eyes were bleak. ‘And if I succeed?’
‘You won’t,’ Lymond said.
But all the same, when Jerott hit him a few seconds later he hurtled back through cushions and shoulders and struck a tent-pole like a shellfish cracked by a seagull. Onophrion, too late to stop it, caught him as he slithered down to the ground and, tut-tutting, propped cushions about him. Sitting down, neatly and quietly, Jerott Blyth drank off three cups of harech, and handed the bowl back for more.
In the arena, they had saddled the horses, and, stringing off down the courses full pelt, began one after the other to alight and resume saddle over and over; feet racing beside the galloping horse, wrists jerking, spine, thighs and calves in the blue pantaloons soaring; seat in saddle again until, approaching the mark, they snatched their bows, strung and shot. They did the same, bending and unbending their bows three times between setting-off point and mark; the same alighting and jumping up on both sides of the horse; the same jumping right way and reversed; the same standing, hallooing, on their mounts’ heaving rumps.
The arrows whickered into the marks. The horses’ hooves, neat and small, flashed pounding from position to position, slithering to a halt in front of Güzel in a shallow veil of white grit. Teeth flashed. Bodies hurtled, lissom and sinewy, and in a triumph of shouts, at the end of each violent, brilliant course, the scimitars flashed, pulled with a cry from the sheaths and glittering, a dozen half-eclipsed suns in the bright cobalt sky.
Georges Gaultier said, ‘Even if you have bought the whole cask, Mr Blyth, I should desist. That stuff can bund.’
Jerott Blyth pulled himself upright on his cushion, lifted the cup at his feet after two misses, and held it out. ‘Have some.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Maître Gaultier. ‘For spirits one requires a strong head or else a weak brain, and I fear I possess neither.’
Jerott grunted. The boy had gone. Beside him, bought outright with money borrowed from anyone who would lend it, was the harech-vendor’s cask, half empty: a dark dribble from his less than accurate pouring contoured the crimson silk cushions with their velvet raised pattern. A little way off Salablanca, warned off already, sat watching him crosslegged. Jerott said, ‘Bloody Muslim: y’r old man had the idea, hadn’t he? No wine. A d’vil in ev’ry grape. Didn’ say a word about spirits, did he? Cunning old devil.’ He poured himself another cup, belligerently, his eyes half shut, and viewed the field. ‘Cur-tailed, skin-clipping