Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [241]
Jerott Blyth placed his palms on the door on either side of the Geomaler’s head, and staring into the beautiful face said with clarity, ‘If Mr Crawford is here, I want to see him. Immediately.’
Tilting back his head, Míkál raised his eyebrows. ‘There is no barrier. I shall take thee myself. Only, one chooses the hour when one calls on an opium-eater.’
There was a moment’s silence. Jerott took down his hands. He said, ‘Are you speaking of Lymond?’
‘I speak of Mr Crawford thy friend, the child’s father,’ said Míkál. ‘To take the poppy in old age or in childishness is a paltry thing, not uncommon. To take it in the flower of manhood, like a she-pig with an itch in the belly—this is melancholy indeed.’ And as Jerott, his brows drawn, stared at him speechless, Míkál added swiftly, ‘Dost thou believe I defame him? Follow then, and observe.’
There was no one in the passage when Míkál opened the door. He took Jerott to the upper part of the house: through two darkened rooms, and came at length to a curtain which hung before a lit doorway. There he stopped and, lifting one delicate hand, drew the edge of the hanging aside so that Jerott without being seen could look into the room.
The light within, which seemed so bright after the darkness, was only the soft flicker of candlelight, and the jewel-like glow of a brazier set on the carpeted floor and from which the faint, pleasant smell of sandalwood stirred. To one side, his hair bright as the embers, a child played with a handful of shells, sitting straight-backed arranging them between his bare legs; squirming sleepily on his stomach to prod them into rows, his thin white shirt rucked up around him. Even in that light Jerott could see the bruising marks on his thighs: spreading blossoms of purple and yellow which disappeared under the cotton. The boy’s eyes were sunk with fatigue and he was not clean, although he had been washed superficially, and the tunic was fresh. But the profile was quite unmistakable. It was the child Jerott had last seen in the arms of a Syrian silk-farmer in Mehedia, his saffron hair hung with blue floss, his eyes black with terror.
There was no fright on Khaireddin’s face now. It was almost without expression indeed as he concentrated on his shells, moving them slowly from one design to another on the carpet beneath him. But there was something visible: something not quite a smile: a kind of secret awareness that rested in all the curves of the baby face with its dark, swollen lids. Then Jerott saw Francis was there too.
Quiet as the child, he was stretched, half-sitting, half-lying on the rim of the candlelight, his weight on one elbow; his hands loosely entwined. Jerott had the impression he had been speaking. A moment later he realized he was speaking at intervals, in soft, disinterested Turkish, the words drifting in and out of a leisurely silence. The boy gave no sign: bent over his play, he might have been alone in the room. Only one could sense that he was happy, and listening.
There was nothing casual about the blue eyes fixed on the down-bent blue gaze of the child. Francis Crawford’s face in this fleeting moment of privacy was filled with ungovernable feeling: of shock and of pain and of a desire beyond bearing: the desire of the hart which longs for the waterbrook, and does not know, until it sees the pool under the trees, for what it has thirsted.
Jerott’s throat closed. He made to move backwards and was stopped by Míkál’s hand on his shoulder and Míkál’s soft voice in his ear. ‘Now dost thou believe?’ And reluctantly, Jerott looked again at that motionless, gentle-voiced speaker and saw this time something different: the eyes which were too blue, and the shadows which were too dark; a toning and tension of skin which was subtly absent. The face of a man, as the Geomaler had said, living on drugs.
Then Míkál ripped back the curtain.
Lymond sprang to his feet, his face horrifying in its change to stark fury. The child gave a whimpering gasp and crouched, shivering, where it knelt, its head tight