Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [12]
Just as he finished Lymond half woke; and with a faint smile for Salablanca, turned his head fully away.
‘Lo siento, señor.’ The words were no more than a breath; and already, having said them, Salablanca had retreated without sound to the door, when Lymond spoke. ‘¿ No duermes?’
‘Duermo y guardo.’
‘There is no need,’ said Lymond in Spanish and lay, looking, as Salablanca bowed his head and withdrew, closing the door on the dark.
2
Lyons
It was raining in Lyons when they got there. The journey, a remorselessly eventful one, took just under three weeks; and after three weeks in Lymond’s company—longer than she had ever spent in the whole of her life—even Philippa’s iron nerves were vibrating.
They were attacked three times in the course of it: once in the forest of Jurthen by the local brigand Long Peter, which they expected; and once crossing the gorge bridge near Nantua, which it appeared only Lymond expected. Because of the size of their cavalcade and its quality, the fighting in both these cases was brief, and they suffered no damage.
Philippa, used to thief-infested journeys at home and to trees with strange burdens, was not unduly disturbed. What shook her, lying under the lee of a waterfall, behind a thornbush and once, by mistake, on an anthill, was Lymond’s articulate and nauseating power to command. To form an escort of even minimal size for Ambassadorial dignity he had hired men-at-arms, swiftly and rigorously chosen, on leaving the French Court. From St Mary’s, his company now lent to the King, he had taken only three men: two grooms and general servants from Midculter, and the Moor Salablanca whom the year before he had freed from slavery at the castle of Tripoli. Now, in addition, he had Jerott with his two or three men, Philippa with her elderly Fogge, and Master Zitwitz with his small staff as well.
Through Onophrion Zitwitz’s eyes, and through those of Jerott, Philippa witnessed the reduction of this multilingual mob, smoking, to a compact troop of precisely drilled servants. As Solothurn gave place to Berne, and Berne to Fribourg; as they passed Romont and Lausanne and skirted the Lake of Geneva to the Weisses Kreuz at Rolle; as they passed from the bearpit and the German cooking at the Falken to the Croix Blanche and the Bois de Cerf where Onophrion made them burn all the sheets, she commented, blithely, on what she saw and shared, frequently, in the scourge of Francis Crawford’s disparaging tongue.
On other matters no one spoke. It was accepted, it seemed, that possessing this talent, Lymond should be exercising it on a parcel of peasants while his own massive command operated without him at Hesdin, and for no better reason than that he wished to travel in state as a Special Envoy to Turkey. It was accepted that Graham Malett, whose hunger for power was greater, perhaps, than that of any other man then living, was to remain undisturbed by Lymond to do what harm he might please on Malta. It was accepted that the mistress, alive or dead, and the son, alive or dead, whom Graham Malett claimed to have hidden as hostages when, three months before, he had bartered his life, were to continue in life or in death, untroubled by Francis Crawford; who balked at publicly beating up Europe in pursuit of a one-year-old byblow.
At the beginning, belligerent, Philippa had tried to discuss it with Jerott. ‘He could at least find out if the baby’s alive. He could at least hurry. If he’d left Scotland when Gabriel did and got to Malta first, he might even have rescued it.’
‘Good God,’ said Jerott. ‘You don’t suppose Gabriel’s keeping them on Malta?’ They were at Coppet at the time and leaving early, by Lymond’s unalterable edict, because Calvin was preaching. Jerott had wished to hear Calvin. ‘The bloody child’s not on Malta; it’s in the corsair Dragut’s harem with its mother, if she’s still alive. If Gabriel’s issued orders to kill it, then it’s dead, and Francis couldn’t have stopped it. How could he?