Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [256]
‘But there is one other consideration,’ said Gilles, ‘outside all tuum and meum. In this war which you as a Knight of St John have fought, between Christian and Moslem: what could be inflaming—what could turn a game of conquest into a game of implacable hatred—sooner than this, the theft from Suleiman’s capital of perhaps its greatest treasure, and that proudly displayed and celebrated in Rome? Then the hordes surely would descend, and who would protect us?’
‘The relics could be received privately,’ said Jerott. ‘It need not be made known where they were discovered, or how. No one else in the city knows they have ever been here.’
The old man, lying on the piled straw outside with the ichneumon on his shoulder, shifted a little and began to get up. ‘It is cold. We must go. As you say, it might have been done secretly thus. But where then my reward and my acclaim? … I am philosophic. The treasures were imprisoned, and they have been freed. They will take their place again in the world, and so shall I. I have again the notes I looked on as lost, and the manuscript I grieved for: I may return now and begin on my book. It is the girl and her uncle who will suffer. I have lost only my vanity.’
‘Be philosophic,’ said Marthe. Her voice was shaking. ‘Condescend, and forgive. It is easy when you are wealthy and learned and travelled, and have a lifetime of achievement behind you. I use my wits, because they are all I possess. If they bring me at last what everyone else has denied me, what right have you to condemn us?’ She swept her arm round the silent room. ‘I have spent my life as you have among beautiful things. I know how to care for them. I feel for them as you do, and so does my uncle. These must be sold, but with my share of what they will bring I can become a person. For the first time a human being with a life of my own; a home and friends and possessions, and work I may follow in peace and become namely for …’
Jerott said, ‘You speak like an embittered old man. Where are your children?’
She looked at him, her eyes full of anger and unshed tears of self-pity. ‘Where they will stay, my drunken monk,’ she said harshly. ‘They are not yours to speak for.’
He climbed the rope then without speaking and made his way stooping up the short arm to the main passage where Gilles already awaited them, the powerful lamp in his hand. The wall behind him, lit for the first time, was packed shoulder-high with bales and piled blocks of straw. Jerott said, ‘Why is it so cold?’ He was shivering.
‘You wish to know?’ said Gilles. Turning he strode up the slope until he came to the opening, heavily blocked, which Jerott had already noticed. ‘This can be opened only from the outside here,’ said Gilles. ‘It led once to a cistern, now dry. Then another entrance was discovered, on the far side of the cistern and nearer the surface, and this aperture was forgotten. These underground caverns are put to many uses, as you have doubtless seen. This one is a storehouse for snow.’
‘Of course,’ said Jerott. ‘To cool Suleiman’s sherbet.… Hence also the straw.’
‘Snow for the Seraglio, probably,’ Gilles agreed. ‘Or perhaps for the use of the viziers or the aghas in their great houses. In time of heat, the winter robe of Olympus is an exquisite luxury.’
The door he had been unblocking swung open as he spoke, and Jerott, moving forward, pressed his fingers into the stiff, compacted mass which filled all the opening. So tightly was it packed that his numbed fingertips could hardly drive through the surface. A cold fresh air swept through the passage.
‘It is cold enough,’ said Gilles; and swung the door shut.
Behind, the light in the treasure-chamber had gone out. Marthe rejoined them a moment later and without speaking they made their way slowly back to the boat. Drifting back over the green water between the silent dark columns there was a desolation in Jerott’s soul such as all the shifting experiences of his life had never bred in him. Wide-eyed and tense in the darkness, he could have wept for them