Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
That time, Gabriel let his knife drop. As it swayed glinting down into the depths he instead put up his hands and, seizing Lymond’s two wrists held the knife from his throat and in a wrestler’s grip, increasing the pressure, began to force the other man, in a kind of iron slow motion, over his head, turning Lymond’s wrist as he did so that he must drop the knife, or allow it to break. And that time, they did not surface.
To Jerott, striking out blind to everything else, it seemed impossible, as from moment to moment the water swirled without breaking, that either man could stay below and alive for so long. To the horsemen gathered on the beach and wading reluctantly into the water, it seemed that both men were lost and it was consequently safe to venture outwards and plunder the bodies. It was to the credit of Jerott’s heart, if not of his good sense, that in spite of the oncoming horsemen he swam on, doggedly, through the opaline sea until, with the outer thread of the whirlpool of movement touching his fingers, he saw something rise in the centre, and lie in its ringed silver chalice, passive as seaweed, with the dark blood swaying like fronds at its sides. It was Gabriel: his eyes closed, his face suffused, with the arteries of both wrists deeply and raggedly slit, and his life’s blood pouring out. Of Lymond, there was no sign at all.
Jerott took a deep breath; and dived.
Francis Crawford was there, not far below, his eyes closed; his hair moving pale in the water. Perhaps he had been trying to surface: perhaps, holding the bleeding man down, minute after minute, he had left it too late. He made no resistance as Jerott gripped him and pulled him above, nor was there any time for elaborate revivication with the Aga Morat’s horsemen trampling the waters. Jerott thumped him once on the back; saw, grimly, no change on the closed and motionless face and, consigning the outcome to fortune, seized Lymond in a less than classic one-handed grasp and kicked out with him backwards, away from the mêlée, to where he knew the last skiff was waiting.
It was a forlorn hope, exposed as they were. Taking his heaving breaths, he saw, indeed, the muskets lift and the arrows aiming, and braced himself somehow to turn over and dive. Then the Aga Morat’s voice, just out of hearing, snapped an order, and repeated it peevishly; and reluctantly, the weapons dropped and the riders, Gabriel’s body supported among them, turned splashing away.
The wages of sin. The wages of sin, thought Jerott, is life. An irony. In his grasp Lymond stirred, and choked, and Jerott, changing his grip, trod water and supported him until, suffocatingly, his lungs were empty of water and his eyes opened after the pain of the first rasping breaths. Empty of thought, the blue eyes for an interval looked into his; and then Jerott saw them change. Jerott said, ‘He is dead.’
The sky was damask and rose: every nuance of rose from pale madder to the raw golden vermilion of the rising sun’s edge. Around them the sea swayed and lapped them like a rose-tinted counterpane. Against the light, the town, sullenly smoking, raised smudged fingers of ruin and protest. By contrast, the horsemen could hardly be seen in the black shade of the walls except as a thin flash of steel, and as the source of a distant faint calling. The voice of a muezzin, faithful, undaunted, rolled across the roseate water.
O God, Most High. I attest that there is no other God but God. I declare that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer; come to the temple of salvation. God is great; and there is no other.’
‘The children,’ said Francis Crawford. O mill … what hast thou ground?’
15
Zakynthos and Aleppo
‘Consider their