Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [311]
They left the Dauphiné where Roxelana was guarding her. They slipped through the sea gate to Marmora where a fishing-boat rocked, its owner conveniently absent, its sail and oars not. Míkál went with them until they were past the confines of the city and some way along the coast, where horses were waiting. Míkál’s friends were waiting there too, singing poems by Lisáni to the jasmine skin of their lovers. They got into the boat laughing, with a ripple of bells, and Míkál took Lymond’s hands. ‘The Dhammapada says, The fletcher carves and adjusts the horn of which his bow is made; the pilot manages his ship; the architect hews his beams; the wise man governs his body. I shall not keep thee. A man must hurry in twilight. Thy little bride has the soul of a hon.’
‘My little bride has an extraordinary range of erotic Persian poetry,’ said Lymond. ‘What else did you teach her, on that journey from Zakynthos?’
‘Happiness,’ said Míkál simply. ‘She has the key. She will open the door, in due time, herself.’
Pierre Gilles’s farewell was less scented, but equally firm. From Marthe he knew now where to find his lost papers in Chios. They had come to terms with each other, these two: whether because of the death of her uncle or the gesture she had initiated which had saved them: the disappearance for ever of all she had dreamed of for sixteen long months. For Jerott, on the other hand, he had formed an inconvenient attachment, largely because of the excellence of his medical Latin. With great difficulty Jerott disentangled himself from an oner to pursue his career in his patron’s palace in Rome, breakfasting on ancient Greek manuscripts and dining on dissected giraffe. The old man, disappointed, had left him with a warning. ‘Watch that woman. She’ll eat you alive.’
‘You wouldn’t like to take Marthe?’ said Jerott, with malice. ‘She has Latin.’
‘She has too many ideas,’ Pierre Gilles had replied. ‘Women with ideas are a threat to the civilized world. Get an ichneumon instead. They have only one idea. It’s the same one, but they’re more open-natured about it.’
Thus there were six of them at last; travelling day and night: travelling with Kuzúm, hollow-cheeked asleep in Philippa’s arms, until Lymond found them a primitive cart-coach in which Marthe and Philippa and the child could snatch an uneasy night’s rest while he drove it steadily on. It was slow, but it was better than stopping. And in daylight they left it and rode on, fast again.
They were all young but Archie, and he was probably tougher than any. But as they travelled westward and south, snatching sleep, too tired to speak, even Jerott began to question the pace. The only opposition they had had was of Onophrion’s making. What if Roxelana was quite content to let them away, and their haste now was for nothing at all?
Lymond answered curtly and, when Jerott persisted, lost his temper in spectacular fashion. They had long outpaced the gentle attentions of Míkál’s fellow creatures, and all the organizing since had been Lymond’s with Archie to assist, riding ahead to obtain food and fresh horses and provender. They dared not take guides.
Because of the searchers at Gallipoli they could not take ship there either. In any case, in that season the large trading-ships with their holds full of passengers were rarely found in these parts, and Lymond wouldn’t trust to a small vessel, driven by weather to frequent and perhaps dangerous anchorages; easily overtaken by a single powerful galley. Once, when they could find no horses, he hired a boat they could row themselves and took to the sea, joining the road further on down the coast. With Kuzúm asleep at their feet Philippa and Marthe shared an oar, grimly in silence, until Jerott, turning, pulled it out of their hands and helped them to ship it, sweat streaming down his own face.