Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [254]
‘You pervert logic. I have offered a fair price for my papers several times beyond what you have paid to redeem them. Instead you require me to hide in a city where I am known and respected; and to dig like a dog.…’
‘How else,’ said Marthe, ‘could you have uncovered the truth of the matter you described in your notes? The Turks had forbidden you this piece of territory. We offer you a chance to finish your research: a piece of pure science unblemished by gain, And you will receive back your papers for nothing.’
‘Master Gilles means,’ said Jerott gently, ‘that he doesn’t like blackmail.’ He looked at the old man. ‘What did they threaten to do if you failed to comply?’
‘Ha!’ said Pierre Gilles. ‘You are, I see, a simpleton like myself. They undertook to destroy all my papers. The whole folly is now academic. I have completed my investigation and shall leave Constantinople as soon as I am told where to recover my belongings.’
Beside him, Jerott saw that Marthe had become very still. ‘You’ve found it?’ she said.
‘It was a simple exercise in logistics. And from the traces found in some of the passages, quite inevitable, as I have told you. It is there behind me. I have left a light down below.’ And the old man moved to one side, with exaggerated courtesy, taking his lamp.
Behind him, Jerott saw, the passage they were pursuing travelled a short way and ended: whether in a wall or in a chance fall of earth was not easy to say. On the left, where Gilles had been standing, the floor of the conduit had sagged even more, making a space littered with tiling and straw in which a man could almost stand upright. Near the floor on the same side the brickwork had shattered and fallen, leaving a sizeable gap. A gap through which, Jerott now saw, a dim light was streaming from a small room sunk far below the level at which they were standing: a room whose floor was a picture, pebble by pebble, of a panther attacked by a trident, and a chariot-race with quadrigas: Jerott could see the horses’ eyes flickering white in the terre verte and cobalt, the terracotta and gold.
In the centre was a small marble fountain, full of rubble still; and a broken bench on one side still lifted a white lion’s foot, in protest at outrage. The atrium of a Byzantine nobleman’s house, kept intact when fire or earthquake reduced the buildings above it; and the shock which had tilted the conduit resettled the earth at strange and different levels. A room which someone discovered when in dire need of refuge; and used; and resealed with newer bricks and mortar and plaster, which could be distinguished even now from the breach Gilles had made. ‘You may go down. There is a rope,’ said the dry, impatient voice. ‘It is all there. I have examined it and started an inventory, so far as I can. You will be so kind, perhaps, as to make haste. It is exceedingly cold.’
Jerott turned. Marthe, lamp in hand, was looking at him with dense, cornflower eyes. ‘Go down,’ she said. ‘And tell me what you can see.’
The room was bigger than he thought, and more beautiful. The mosaic pavement, spreading under his feet, had been swept clear of dust so that the swirl of motion and colour could clearly be seen. The walls had been painted: horses pranced and strange birds strutted in pairs, and odd and delicate persons in toga or chlamys stood and watched, or ran mysterious races. There was a small silver mirror still hung on a wall, and a silver jug with a spout, thin and blackened with age, standing still in a niche.
The ceiling had held up; but the end wall was nothing but bricks and tiles and great slabs of marble, where the rest of the house had caved in. The opposite wall was intact. Against it, Master Gilles had spread out his cloak, smoothing the folds over the tesserae. On that in turn he had placed a number of objects: nearly all rectangular and tinged a uniform blackened grey. Some still bore the shreds of silk cloth in which each had been wrapped. Against the side wall were others, stacked one on the other in varying