Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [123]
Lymond did not move, but there was an edge Jerott knew in the soft voice. ‘Tell me now.’
‘Well …’ said Archie Abernethy, and told him.
After the first three words, Lymond dropped his hands and sat up: by the end he was on his feet, staring at the stolid face of the mahout. ‘You left her alone in Zakynthos!’
‘Yes. Well. I had to warn ye,’ said Archie. ‘Man, ye’d be there yet if I hadna got it all fixed. And the lassie is fine. I wouldna have left her if I wasna sure she’d be safe.’
‘You were under orders,’ said Lymond, speaking with fearful precision, ‘to escort Philippa Somerville to her home in England. You tell me now that you have left her among total strangers in a country quite unknown to her, and about to attempt a journey, by herself, into the wilds of Macedonia in order to buy … My God, I think you must be insane,’ said Francis Crawford; and for a second his voice split, lacerated by his nerves. ‘A child of twelve, let loose among Turks … what bloody daisy-field at the back of your mind persuades you she’ll be safe? The whole thing is a trap. It must be. You know as well as I do that the child wasn’t sent from Algiers to Zakynthos in October. It was passed from hand to hand along the whole North African coast until it ended up at Mehedia where Jerott here saw it. Christ, didn’t you tell her?’
Archie Abernethy got up. He had resumed his turban: under it, his weathered skin was very dark, but composed, although his eyes were uneasy. ‘It seemed to be the right bairn,’ he said. ‘It was in the care of Evangelista Donati’s own brother. It was the right size and colouring; it was branded; it came from Algiers; it spoke English. And,’ said Archie, rushing it a little for his own good as well as Lymond’s, ‘it was the wean the Dame de Doubtance had told Mistress Somerville to go off and find.’
He told Philippa’s story to a silent audience. Jerott, biting his lip, was thinking too hard still to comment. And Lymond, retreated again to the hatch, became very quiet indeed. Archie Abernethy ended, paused, and said, ‘I’d back the wean to be genuine, sir. She’s a fey woman, the Dame de Doubtance, and the bairn had her ring.’
‘The Lady of Doubtance is a fraying-post for bloody neurotics. We are dealing with facts.’ Lymond stopped. ‘Jerott. Which child do you think sounds genuine?’
‘We know,’ said Jerott. ‘My God, I know anyway.… I’ve held him in my arms, Francis. Only one is called Khaireddin, and only one had a nurse called Kedi who spoke Irish Gaelic like a native. The other’s either a trap, or some damned funny idea of the old woman’s.’ He couldn’t see Lymond’s face in the dark, but risked it. He said, ‘You seemed to believe her, anyway.’
There was a pause. Lymond’s voice, when it came, was normal but tired. ‘Oh, I suppose I believe her. Whether I can interpret her correctly or not is another matter entirely.…’ Then, after a longer pause: ‘… Christ? he said. ‘There can’t be a doubt. There can’t be two boys so alike.…’ He stopped again, his lips pressed together.
‘And tomorrow?’ said Jerott. ‘I gather Gabriel will be there?’
‘With the Knights of St John,’ said Archie, relieved. ‘And distinguished by a blue panache, so’s his circumcised friends ken not to scratch him. He’ll be there, and so shall we. He’s ours for the taking.’
In the dark, Jerott spoke only to Lymond. ‘And you will kill him, notwithstanding,’ he said.
Curtly, Lymond replied, ‘I shall kill him.’
‘Then all you have to do afterwards,’ said Jerott, his voice equally weary, ‘is to watch and see which child will die.’
13
Thessalonika
‘There are eighteen varieties of verse-form in Ottoman poetry,’ wrote Philippa in the diary she began that autumn on leaving Zakynthos. ‘All Ottoman poetry is about love.’ After some thought, she added, ‘Geomalers have very long memories.’
The beginning of the diary was one of several formidable steps she took, with Míkál’s help, after Archie Abernethy and Sheemy had departed. She bought a mule. Her clothes were in rags, and moreover foreign: she invested in cheap