Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [249]
‘I suggest that you go and rewire the spinet,’ said Jerott simply.
‘And?’ said Marthe.
‘And give Philippa Somerville the one piece of information she needs to enable her and the child to escape.’
‘To escape from Topkapi?’ Marthe stared and then laughed. ‘Juste ciel: your minds must have rotted. No one leaves Topkapi, or enters it without permission.’
‘You don’t know your brother,’ said Jerott.
‘Nor do I wish to,’ said Marthe. She stood up. ‘I tell you for the third time: I do not perform services. Your ingenious master must find another emissary, that’s all.’
‘There is no one else now,’ Jerott said. He moved forward until they stood face to face; her head only a little lower than his wide, frowning eyes. ‘It isn’t for Lymond, or for me. It’s for Philippa and the children. You have every excuse to enter Topkapi and no risk to run. In a matter of days after that we shall be all gone except Francis, and whatever the outcome of that, you’ll be left in peace.’
Her dirty, imperious face was set hard; her eyes cold. ‘I have only to denounce you to the Janissary outside to be left in perfect tranquillity. My answer is no.’
‘How much do you want?’ Jerott said.
The great, the insufferable anger banked behind those brief words struck no answering fury from Marthe. Instead there grew on her face a charming, lop-sided smile; a smile full of irony and small, cruel amusements. ‘More than you have,’ she said.
He said, ‘Your brother is rich.’
‘He has shown me no sign of it,’ Marthe replied. She smiled again. ‘Shall I tell you a small interesting fact? The banker’s orders which paid for this journey, and for the bribes and rewards and gifts it entailed, are now fully withdrawn. There was enough, Master Zitwitz told me, to cover the last weeks at the Embassy, and then, but for their clothes, it was virtually finished. Lymond has no reserves. He has only a second son’s property in Scotland, and an estate in Sevigny, France, and a vagrant mercenary company, whereabouts unknown. You cannot pay me with these.’
I am good! had cried the small, frantic voice. And Lymond had taken his hand away, holding back every impulse; and had answered him gently, his voice level and schooled.
Jerott thought of what one man had given, over all the past year; and without removing his gaze from Marthe’s defiant blue eyes he put up one hand and unfastened and flung off his cloak. Beneath, tucked out of sight, was his dagger. He slipped it out of its sheath; tossed it once, glittering in the air, and looked again, smiling, at the pale, dirty face of his hostess. ‘Then,’ said Jerott, ‘I shall pay you with your own coin instead. Lead me, mademoiselle, to your client with the mud-covered harpsichord.’ And as she opened her mouth quickly to scream, he put one capable hand over her face, and twisting her into his powerful grip, dragged her, knife in hand, through and out of the door.
She was quick-witted and supple, and not without training. But he hurled her like a kitten through the bare rooms and deserted passages of her house, while she bit and scuffled and kicked and tried in vain to free her mouth to scream a furious warning. She fought for his knife and was cut and found in Jerott’s face hard indifference to the blood streaming down her neck and her arm. They burst into the kitchens and the negress, her hand to her mouth, scuttled into a corner and crouched, her breath hissing. Jerott flung open door after door. In one was a tumble of bedding: that of Gilles and Gaultier doubtless. In another he found the neatly rolled mattress and almost clinical orderliness extended to all her possessions by Marthe. Of the two men there was no trace whatever. Nor, needless to say, was there a sign of any mythical client with harpsichord.
It was then that he let his hand slip and she bit it; and seizing her moment as he snatched it away cursing, she filled her lungs and screamed with all her power. Somewhere, a voice called in answer, greatly