Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [22]
‘If she adds one hairsbreadth to the peril of this ship and the people she carries, I can and will stop her now,’ Lymond had said. ‘She is one of the family, you say. You’ll have to tell me much more.’
‘Will I?’ said Gaultier. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. She’s an orphan—name of Marthe—brought up in a convent. We paid for that. And since she finished her learning she’s been in the business helping me. She’s no schoolgirl. She’s been to Anatolia with me and back; and she goes to Venice on her own when it’s necessary, to buy and to sell. There’s not much she doesn’t know about clocks, or about jewels … or about men.’
‘I want to meet her,’ said Lymond.
‘You’ll see her,’ had said Georges Gaultier comfortably. ‘If not here, then at Marseilles. You’ll take her, too.’
So Philippa got her leave to bring Archie Abernethy with her and sail on the Dauphiné. But they had not seen the woman Marthe before they left Lyons. And permission to sail from Marseilles depended still, Philippa was grimly aware, on whether or not the woman Marthe was found to be eligible. Kiaya Khátún, she imagined, would pass like a shot.
But Jerott’s manner, greeting them all when they arrived in Marseilles, was unusually difficult to define. Yes, they had had an uneventful journey. Yes, the crate had arrived in good order and was now waiting in the King’s Marseilles lodging, where they would be permitted to stay until the Dauphiné sailed. And yes, Maître Gaultier and his assistant were also safely installed with it, awaiting Lymond’s instructions.
‘Jerott?’ said Lymond. ‘What are you not saying?’ His eyes, as the orderly cavalcade paced through the muddy streets, had not left that forceful aquiline face since they met. And Jerott, Philippa saw with disbelief, flushed.
For a moment longer, the strict blue eyes studied him; and then Lymond laughed. ‘She’s an eighteen-year-old blonde of doubtful virginity? Or more frightful still, an eighteen-year-old blonde of unstained innocence? I shall control my impulses, Jerott, I promise you. I’m only going to throw her out if she looks like a troublemaker, or else so bloody helpless that we’ll lose lives looking after her. Not everyone,’ he said, in a wheeling turn which caught Philippa straining cravenly to hear, ‘is one of Nature’s Marco Polos like the Somerville offspring.’
Pink with irritation, Philippa fell back into line with one of Jerott’s men, but not before she heard Jerott Blyth murmur, ‘Leave it. Leave it till we get in;’ and saw Lymond’s sharp turn of the head.
It was then that Philippa, dropping back still farther, said cheerfully to her neighbour, in an undertone, ‘They’re talking about Marthe, Maître Gaultier’s assistant. What’s she like? Pretty?’
‘She’s pretty,’ said the man.
Philippa studied the taciturn face. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘Mr Blyth wants her all to himself?’
For a moment, she thought it hadn’t worked. Then the man gave a snort. ‘Mr Blyth want her? He held us up at Avignon for two days refusing to go on until she was sent back home, but Gaultier wouldn’t do it, and he had to give in. Mr Blyth and Gaultier haven’t spoken since. Aye,’ said Jerott’s man morosely. ‘It’s going to be a grand, sociable trip.’
Arrived at the house, Philippa didn’t even wait for her luggage. Followed, panting, by Fogge, she raced to the bedroom allotted her; flung off her cloak, changed into a pair of unsuitable slippers from her maid’s carpet bag, splashed her face and hands with water, curry-combed the end of the hank of hair that hung down from under her cap and galloped, muddy skirts and all, downstairs towards the sound of Francis Crawford’s light voice.
The principal