Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [177]
‘Overtly, it cannot be done,’ said Salablanca.
‘Discreetly, it can,’ said Onophrion. ‘If one of us remains in his room and can call out at the first sign of trouble.’
‘This I shall do,’ said Salablanca softly.
An expression of lofty distaste crossed M. Zitwitz’s fleshy pink face, and was gone. ‘I’m sure you will. Customs being what they are, I don’t suppose he’ll be expected to warm his own bed either. Mumsconduren, they call these dervishes. Practitioners of incest. A gentleman all the world over is entitled to his amusements, but I consider it puts an unwarranted strain on good manners to press him with these kinds of attentions.’
Salablanca’s dark face and soft voice both kept their gravity. ‘Do not fear. Monseigneur’s integrity is, I am certain, inviolate.’
For a moment M. Zitwitz, who never gossiped with his inferiors, looked at him. Then holding his counsel, he turned and plodded away.
In the event, the sheets were warm when finally Lymond was allowed to retire to his room in the small hours of the morning. He closed the door gently behind him. Then, pulling his way down the jewelled ties of his doublet, he walked lazily up to the bed and stood looking down on the beautiful body which lay there, brown and lithe as a cat.
Lymond slipped off his doublet. ‘No, Míkál,’ he said. And swinging the dark green silk for a moment from one idle finger, he allowed it to fall, spreading lightly over the breathing bronze flesh. ‘With or without bells. I dare not have you catch cold. You would be a walking tintinabulation of clangers.’
There was a blur of movement. The green silk was on the floor and the boy’s sweet warmth, enveloping, was where Lymond had been. But Lymond had moved quite as swiftly and was there no longer, but at the window, which looked out, he saw briefly, on a little courtyard, with flat trays of something dark and aromatic laid out on the bricks, and a garden beyond. Míkál, arrested with dignity and grace in the place of his failure, stood breathing lightly a little way off, and said, ‘Hâkim?’
His back to the window, Lymond took a quick breath, and held it for a moment, his eyes searching Míkál’s. Then he said gently, ‘Thou art faultless: delicate as a flower. May thy love be beautiful. May thy beauty be light. May thy light be exalted light. But with another, Míkál’
The dark brows in the faun-face were straight. ‘I have played to you,’ said Míkál.
‘I know,’ said Lymond. He hesitated and then, clearly against his will, he said, ‘It isn’t that music doesn’t matter: the reverse, as it happens. So my defences against it are very strong. Can you understand that?’
The reasoning was plain enough, evidently, to Míkál. He dropped on the mattress, stretching on his two slender elbows, and looking up at Francis Crawford with a kind of hurt anger, mixed with a queer bravura challenge, he said, ‘Will the tongue of Ummídé speak for me?’ And went on in his soft and desperate voice:
Thou art a half-drunk Turk; I am a half-slain bird.
Thy affair with me is easy; my desire of thee is difficult.…
Thou settest thy foot in the field. I wash my hands of life.
Thou causest sweat to drip from thy cheek. I pour blood from my heart.…
When shall the luck be mine to lift thee drunken from the saddle,
While that crystal-clear arm embraces my neck like a sword-belt?
Lymond had not moved, although his heavy gaze this time was downbent; and there was no levity for once in his face. He said, ‘I am sorry. It is a hurt for me, too. There is no apology enough for him who holds the wine of love in his hand.’
I ask for no apology,’ said Míkál. ‘I ask nothing but kindness.’
‘I have learned,’ said Lymond, ‘that kindness without love is no kindness.’
Pushing himself slowly backwards, Míkál stood slowly up. ‘Thy love then is given to women?’
‘To no one,’ said Lymond; but the boy’s intent ear caught the breath of delay. ‘To whom, then?’ said Míkál. ‘To one