Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [267]
He killed the guard, quietly, as he made his rounds past the spot. It was not a time to take risks, or to be squeamish. Now he laid near him the drugged meat for the hounds which the other doorkeeper would shortly bring out and release. In half an hour the man lying at his feet would be due to report. Perhaps ten minutes after that, the alarm might be raised; and shortly after that Gabriel himself was due to return. He had forty minutes in which to do what he had to do. It was enough.
It had not been hard either to discover beforehand which was Gabriel’s room. A travelling juggler, calling for alms in the kitchen, might well inquire the whereabouts of the master of the house. The servants too were proud of their new master, who was gentle and generous, and of the luxury fit for an emperor with which he had begun to surround himself.
There was an almond tree: the twisted grandchild of what had once been a hillside of blossom, near the wooden balcony, totally enclosed, which overhung the small herb- and water-garden at the side of the house. Lymond climbed it noiselessly, his eyes on the windows around him, and reaching the furthermost point, jumped for the balcony. For a moment he hung, securing his purchase; then with a swing of his body he was up and clinging against the brown intricate fretwork while he probed at the lock with a wire.
There was a click, and he was inside, and parting the cloth-of-gold curtains which led into Gabriel’s chamber. Then he pulled them together behind him.
Complete darkness, and the scent of jasmine, mixed with the fading odours of incense. A woman’s scent. Not surprising perhaps. Even when sworn to obedience and chastity, Gabriel had denied none of his appetites. Picking his way in the dark, Lymond made sure that the room had only one other door, and that it was locked. Then slipping out steel, flint and tinder, he struck a small spark and, with his spill, found and lit a fine taper.
The floor was carpeted, the pile deep as fur, and the walls were hung with silk chosen by a master expert in silks: cloth of gold with a raised pattern of velvet: a crimson velvet from Bursa, woven with leaves and cornflowers and roses in silver thread and white silk; a banded velvet and satin with the word Arrahman, ‘The Merciful’, within cartouches in olive and silver.
There was no Turkish mattress, but a couch in ivory inlaid with dark woods and outlined in gold: it was unmade, its coverlet half on the floor, and glimmering under it was a single earring: a pretty trinket made in the form of a tassel of seed pearls, its knot studded with rubies. Lymond looked at it for a moment, and then, scooping it up, slipped the earring into the purse at his belt.
The rest of the room was no less exquisite: the candelabra of silver, the Persian enamels, the storage chests of lacquer from Cathay, or of leather, bound with worked metal. In the corner stood a statue of Venus in white marble, signed by Praxiteles, a jade Mohammedan tespi slung round its neck. ‘Cum fueris Romae, Romano vivitomore …’
There was no one to hear. Lymond knelt, and using his wire, forced open and lifted the lid of the first chest ‘… Cum fueris alibi, vivito more loci. Loot, Gabriel? And gold. And some jewellery worthy of the grandest of Viziers—why not in your Treasury, I wonder? But no papers. Try again …’
There were very few letters. Lymond was both quick and thorough. Not only the furnishings of the room but the