Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [150]
‘I feel,’ said Lymond, ‘you would fail to convince as a Pole. Go as yourself. Unless M. Gaultier still has objections? In which case Marthe will of course come with us, and we shall leave Aleppo to Jerott and Archie?’
‘No … no,’ said Georges Gaultier. ‘Though I shall need her to help with the spinet at Constantinople.’
‘She will be there,’ Lymond said.
They waited until he had gone, with Salablanca, to view the brigantine San Marco, which had been hired for the trip to Aleppo. But although it was leaving, they had been told, in the hour, Marthe made no immediate movement to pack. She said instead, to Jerott, ‘Are there no balloons, no bunting, no dancing round bonfires? Does the machine not make festival when the great Gabriel is dead? Or is the whole programme a farce, clicking from item to item, and none of it real? Is there such a person as Gabriel? Did he live? Is he dead? And after him we have Child One; and then another to seek; and who knows, yet another and another: this man will traverse Europe, a crazy Pied Piper drawing waifs, flotsam, lagan and deodands in his train. Is Philippa Somerville lost? Or safe at home in England with Fogge …? Tell us, Mr Blyth. If he is mad, I can agree with him.’
‘He isn’t mad,’ said Jerott.
Onophrion Zitwitz stirred. ‘Your pardon, Chevalier. But there would be no urgency, surely, in finding these children if Sir Graham Malett were not dead.’
‘He is dead,’ Jerott said. ‘And by Lymond’s hand. So either child or both will perish. You don’t hold festival, Mlle Marthe, with that hanging over your head.’
‘It was an assassination, then?’ said Marthe, sweet contempt in her voice. ‘I thought it remarkable our friend should be so finely unblemished. What a pity he could not risk asking a question or two. About the identity of the children, for example.’
‘It … was a fair fight,’ said Jerott. A body, floating mindlessly in the sea, blood waving like weed from its half-severed wrists. And another, swaying below, who had held on too long; beyond the last thread of air and the last spark of consciousness, with all the strength of his considerable will. ‘And the identity of the children was a device of Gabriel’s own caprice. Both are branded; both were in Dragut’s harem. No one knows one from the other. Both, it is to be assumed, will suffer now Gabriel is dead, for Gabriel didn’t care for either, except as a means of revenge. One is Lymond’s son. And the other is Gabriel’s. And no one living now knows which is which.’
‘Then,’ said Georges Gaultier, rising from his fine chair, ‘rather than perpetuate the one or the other, I must say I should prefer to let them both die.’
Of the two ships which parted company that night, the Dauphiné had the more uncomfortable journey. To begin with, it was hard work. After months of desultory sailing and captivity, she was required to fulfil her royal function once more: her slaves and her sails had to be redressed, her decks varnished, her colours freshened, her officers dressed in their creased and mildewed best clothing.
The stores under Onophrion’s care had suffered no harm. Long before the landing at Zakynthos, Lymond’s clothes were in exquisite order; the food stores inventoried; the silver and menus made ready. In Lymond’s efficient hands the running of the ship likewise became invigorated and orderly. To Salablanca, the spectacle was familiar. To Onophrion, it was what he expected in any man he distinguished by serving. And to Gaultier, it was another manifestation of the loutish physical world, which so often insulted the sensitive man and his art. The world to which, with pleasure, he lent money at exorbitant interest.
They arrived at Zakynthos, guns firing and French flag fluttering high on the masthead, and lay still in the pink evening light, the rigging outlined in the firefly light of twelve hundred