Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [158]
The French attaché, with whatever cause, was more bracing. ‘A woman without friends, in Aleppo? She would need help. The priest. The Patriarch. The services of a consul to procure her the shelter of a khan, to change her money, to obtain a carrier, an interpreter, a Janissary, a guide. Whoever has helped her, one can discover him.’
‘And if she had friends waiting?’ said Jerott.
‘Ships come as the wind blows. How could they wait?’ said the attaché. ‘Wherever they are, she must seek them. Yellow hair is not common. Somewhere is the horse, the camel she used.… In a week I may hâve news for you.’
‘It must be sooner than that. Wherever he is, he is in danger,’ said Jerott.
But the attaché shrugged. ‘In the East, God knows, time is different. To achieve any desired end: it is slow. But dangers hasten slowly, as well.’
He was out in both reckonings. Before the end of a week, he had concluded his inquiries and doom, the brisk doom of the Christians, had arrived.
It began with the culminating explosion in a series of skirmishes to do with Marthe’s desire to explore Aleppo, in Arab clothes, accompanied by the Ethiopian woman he had bought for her, and no one else.
Jerott had complained, before coming on this trip, that he could not in good faith be accountable for Marthe’s safety. It did not prevent him, when he found her slipping out of a side door that first morning, from seizing and berating her before the absent French Consul’s interested household, until she stopped him by stalking back into the house.
When, in her own room, she confronted him, it was like facing the worst of Francis Crawford; with the difference that Lymond was usually right, and therefore cut deeper still.
It was unpleasant enough. Marthe stood, robed from head to foot in the coarse undyed robes of the Arab, her veil crushed in her hand, and demanded, softly, to know by what conceivable right her safety, spiritual, moral or physical, was any business of his. ‘Do you imagine,’ said Marthe, ‘that I cannot conceive of the risks? Or that I have not the intelligence to weigh them? Or that perhaps I may not be able to judge better than you the course I must take in my own affairs?’
‘My God,’ said Jerott. He slammed the door and, walking across, flung his cap on her table. ‘Perhaps for one second you would sit on the lid of your irreducible ego and listen to me. I regard you, masculine or feminine, as the greatest genius the world has ever produced. I agree you have a superior knowledge of your own affairs and are far more capable than the Consulate, for example, of weighing up the risks. Suppose even, for the sake of conjecture, that I don’t give a brass bagcheek whether the first Tartar you meet doesn’t drag you back to his tents and elect you Broody Mother to the whole bloody tribe. All I am saying is that, first, if anything happens to you, I’ve got to face Francis Crawford and also your uncle. And second, if you must face risks with good reason—and there had damned well better be a good reason—-then there’ll be a good few less risks if I come along with you.’
‘No,’ said Marthe simply.
That was the first time. Flinging out furiously ten minutes later, having achieved precisely nothing, Jerott retired cursing to his room and stayed there until his servant warned him, as he had been instructed, that the mademoiselle had left her room once again.
That time, Jerott thought he had never seen her look so angry. The blue eyes were open pits of cold hatred when she saw him; but this time, she did not turn back or argue. Slipping the black veil into place over her face, she brushed past him and continued on her way out of doors.
‘Very well,’ said Jerott. ‘Only I am afraid you will not remain very anonymous. I am coming with you, and, as I hope you have noticed, I am wearing one of Onophrion’s more vernal creations in pale green watered silk. Always mindful of my master’s dignity. We shall be a pretty