Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [274]
‘I don’t think,’ said Marthe calmly, ‘that it would do me much good.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ said Philippa gently. ‘He won’t kill you.’
The glint of a cold surprise, so familiar from the early days on the Dauphiné, returned to Marthe’s level blue gaze. ‘You think I would scuttle into any man’s harem? Would you?’
‘Yes. For Kuzúm,’ said Philippa. She hesitated, guessing. ‘People help one another. Wouldn’t … Mr Blyth perhaps do the equivalent for you?’
Marthe laughed, without amusement, deep in her long throat. ‘Mr Blyth put me here. Mr Crawford and I owe each other nothing. My uncle I hate and you I do not know. No one, as far as I see, has endeavoured to engineer my escape.’
‘I think … that was only because they didn’t know you were a prisoner,’ said Philippa. She was rather pale. She said, in a small voice, ‘I would do it for you.’
The colour left Marthe’s face too, in patches; then flooded in, deep rose over her brow and cheeks and slim neck. She stood up. ‘Because I look like my brother?’ she said.
Philippa’s dark brows had met in a straight line; her brown eyes opaque with a new self-control fighting with a faint and horrified understanding. After a while she said simply, ‘No. Because I know what it is to need help.’
For a moment longer Marthe studied her; and Philippa rather bleakly wondered what amused rejoinder, what cutting remark she had called on herself. But Marthe in the end said merely, ‘Then … when I need help, I shall have to call on you, shan’t I?’ in a voice whose coolness and impatience did not ring entirely true. There was a silence, and then Philippa said awkwardly, ‘I didn’t know.… Is Mr Crawford your brother?’
The blue eyes this time were both cool and amused. ‘If he knew, he might prefer you to put it differently,’ said Marthe. ‘I am his bastard sister. We have the same failings. Didn’t you guess?’
The tribunal before which they had all been arraigned was held without delay in the Divan Court the following morning. To Jerott, the former Knight of St John, who knew better perhaps than any of them the exquisite range of Saracen torture, the news was a relief. Lymond, to whom he said as much, did not reply, but Archie was blunt. ‘He won’t have us marked before all the pashas. It’s afterwards, when we’ve been sentenced, that he’ll have a free hand.’
Today, under Archie’s ministrations, Lymond seemed completely himself; and although the marks of his beating were still plain on his face, the fresh robes they were given, according to custom, had covered the rest. Between waking and setting out for the court he had said very little: what was there indeed, thought Jerott, to say? An apology perhaps to Archie, for having trusted where he should never have trusted. But that was hindsight. Who could have suspected Míkál?
As for Jerott himself, he had brought his troubles on his own head. No one had asked him to compel Marthe to come, and no one had asked him to follow her. He waited, chatting with Archie, until they heard the tramp of the Janissaries outside, and Lymond said, ‘Jerott …’ and then stopped, his eyes brilliant; his face very white. He said, ‘Surely they will let me speak to you both, before the end?’
‘What is it?’ said Jerott; and took Lymond’s wrist. ‘There is time. Tell us now.’
‘I can’t,’ said Francis Crawford, an odd note of desperation in his voice. ‘Archie, will this bloody stuff last out the morning, or shall I have to take more in the …?’
Archie’s voice was steady as ever; comfortable as when he held converse with one of his lions. ‘It should last. But you’ve more in your kerchief and in your purse, and I’ve supplies for several days after that.’
It was then that you remembered, thought Jerott Blyth suddenly, that Archie after all was a man in his fifties. And that Lymond was just twenty-six.
Then the door opened and Lymond, the balance