Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [40]
‘That leaves the gardens,’ said Lymond. ‘Not very likely, but we’ll search them to make sure. What puzzles me is why they didn’t attack in the house, if they’re going to. They can hardly surround the whole house and garden, unless they’ve got a squadron of troops, and they’re not going to find it very easy to catch us out here in the dark. If this is all Gabriel’s doing, then it’s for some other purpose, surely, other than a simple ambush and killing.’
Leaving the path, they moved over the soft winter grass and through a dark maze of small, hanging trees. More paths, a fountain, a paved square lined with dark tubs. Jerott barked his shin and bit back an exclamation. Lymond’s voice, even and quiet, said, ‘Unless there has been a mistake, a fault in his plans. But I can’t believe that, though I’d like to.… ’
Before them the rest of the gardens stretched into darkness, unknown and quiet. From the house, muffled by bushes and trees, women’s voices scratched the silence, raised in anger or argument. A cat mewed, and far off, the constant, irritating barking of a dog was taken up by another, still more distant. Of the crammed, multilingual, vociferous life that lay outside this expensive, deserted oasis there was no other sound, and they could hear the wet, lukewarm wind moving the tops of the trees and blowing a dead leaf, like tinfoil, along the brick path. Jerott said, ‘There’s nothing here. If it’s a trick, it’s just the malicious one of leading us up a blind alley. That brute who ran away wouldn’t have turned his back on a fortune.’
‘Unless …’ said Lymond, ‘… Oh, bloody hell, let’s get it over with. You take that wall and I’ll take this. We’ll walk the length of the garden and compare notes at the bottom. There’s no point in sticking together anyway: if anyone attacks you in this place, you don’t fight; you run, and get back to the ship as you can. If anything strikes you as mysterious, whistle.’
‘Right.’
‘… Jerott?’
Two steps away, Jerott stood perfectly still. ‘I hear you.’
‘You sound like a schoolmaster,’ said Lymond’s voice at his ear, with a trace of its usual lightness. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go on.’
Jerott did not move. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘Something regrettable. I’ll say it; and then we can both forget it,’ said Lymond. ‘You put up with a lot, you know. More than you should. More than other people can be expected to do.… I find I need a sheet anchor against Gabriel. However much I try—don’t let me turn you against me.’
Jerott said slowly, ‘You command your own will. Otherwise I shouldn’t be here.’
‘You mean I swallowed my pride. But then, there are some things I don’t think I could stomach.… And Gabriel knows them too well.’
‘Gabriel,’ said Jerott firmly, ‘is now at Birgu, Malta, engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the Grand Mastership of the Order of St John. He is unlikely to spend a large part of his time arranging esoteric disasters for his adversaries. He is far more likely to arrange to kill them stone dead.’
‘All right. You go and get killed stone dead on that side of the garden, and I’ll stick to this,’ said Lymond. ‘Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius, or why worry about tomorrow, when your funeral is today. Goodbye.’
‘Au revoir,’ said Jerott Blyth, in stout contradiction of his own theory; and, striding off to the right, contacted the wall rather suddenly and proceeded to follow it, in cloud-muffled starlight; surveying his half of the ground as he went.
And so he was the first, in the end, to encounter Oonagh O’Dwyer … far down the garden and out of range of their whispering voices. So far off that Jerott was drawn to the place by a sound which had been inaudible where Lymond and he had stood before parting. In that disused and derelict garden, the sound of light, wind-blown fountains, playing in a