Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [166]
No one who had been long in Archie Abernethy’s company could fail to know who this was. Jerott felt sick. His head ached; and the thinking he had done since he came to his senses that morning had not helped to make him feel better. If the brat’s not at Aleppo, it’s dead, he had convinced himself somehow. Or likely to cost more than our blood.
He had meant to go back to France. He had no intention of wet-nursing anyone’s bastard, then or now. But now he meant to find that child, alive, whether anyone wanted it or not.
Jerott swallowed. When it had to be done, it could be done. That, at least, you learned in the Order; and he had relearned it, to some purpose, under Lymond. He took a deep breath and, turning, spoke to the old man as he joined him, the grey, cat-like creature on his shoulder. ‘I believe, sir, you must be M. Pierre Gilles d’Albi?’
‘Yes. Naturally,’ said the anatomist. Several sick-looking men, obviously hired as menial assistants, had appeared and were waiting for him: he ignored them, peering, frowning, at the carcass and then up at the sun as he tied the leather apron-strings over his smock. ‘The stool’s over there.’ Without warning, he shot a glance at Jerott under drooping white brows. ‘But it’s too much for you, is it?’
‘No. I’ll do it,’ said Jerott. ‘If I may introduce myself? My name is Jerott Blyth. I’m a Scotsman from Nantes, and I have a very good friend who is a lifelong admirer of yours. Archie Abernethy.’
‘Good,’ said Pierre Gilles. He strode forward, Jerott following, and knife in hand, slit something disgusting and peered inside, his right hand continuing to work. ‘Take this down. De Gyraffa, Bellon dicet, quam Arabes Zurnapa, Graeci et Latini Camelopardalin nominant…’
Five nerve-racking sentences later, he paused. ‘Do I have to translate?’
There was pen and ink on the table. Scribbling furiously, Jerott shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Thanks to God.’ Something flew past into a bin. ‘Did you say Abernethy?’
‘That’s right. Archie Abernethy. He looked after the menagerie at Taraassery, and I think he was in Constantinople too. He also had the care recently of the King of France’s elephants. By the name Abernaci.’
‘Oh. Now, what have we here?’ said M. Gilles. ‘Ah. Take this down …’
There followed five minutes’ furious dictation, followed by the flight through the air of another section of giraffe. ‘There’s a bit here I want to draw later. If it lasts. Abernaci? Oh, I remember him well. A small fellow, with a broken nose? So he is still alive, is he?’
‘I expected to meet him here, in Aleppo,’ said Jerott. ‘We’re both with Francis Crawford. It’s a special embassy with a gift from the King to the Sultan.’
Pierre Gilles stopped working. He straightened, his hands bent at the wrists like a begging dog’s, and said, ‘You are in the same party as the girl?’
‘What girl?’ said Jerott, a little bemused in spite of himself with the stench and the Latin and the heat and the effect of the raki.
‘The girl who calls herself Marthe, I think it is? You are a friend of Marthe?’ said the anatomist.
It required a moment’s reflection, but Jerott decided on the truth. ‘No. We are in the same party, but the rest of us know very little of Mlle Marthe. She is assistant to the antiquarian-craftsman who manufactured the gift,’ said Jerott.
‘Georges Gaultier, I understand. A rogue and a usurer. Take my advice and do not meddle with either of them. Hold that, will you?’ said Pierre Gilles.
Jerott took it, hurriedly laying down his pen. ‘Why? Do you know them, sir?’ he said.
The anatomist, screwing up his eyes, was taking measurements. He reeled them off, noting them down himself with bloody fingers, before he said, ‘I simply advise, do not meddle with them. Now pass me the hacksaw.’
It was all Jerott was able to get out of him on that subject, and almost his total pronouncement on any other. To Jerott it had seemed suddenly likely that if anyone had seen and heard of a white child landed with a Syrian woman somewhere along the coast, or even here in Aleppo,