Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [41]
There were cypresses in the way; formal gardens sealed from the stars by wall and creeper and a hedging of palms. It was from this absolute dark that he turned a corner and saw stretching before him a study in milk-quartz and silver; a fantasy lit by the moon and the stars and a single lamp hung in the distance, an ox-eye on velvet.
It was a flower-garden, the green growing scents stirring already in the mild African winter. The pond sunk in its centre was a long one, edged by a vista of twinned silver sprays: from end to end, the spray rose like a mist and obscured the kiosk at the far end, a lacy thing hung with leaves, where the oil lamp burned quietly still.
And under the lamp, Jerott saw, a woman was sitting.
He stopped. From the rest of the garden there came no untoward sound; no voice, no footfall; no stir but the wind shaking the tree-tops and the kissing patter of water on water, nearer at hand. If Lymond was near, there was no sign of him. If this were Gabriel’s trap, it was delicately baited indeed.
His sword drawn, moving from shadow to shadow along the tall cypresses, his footfalls lost in the waterplay, Jerott advanced to the kiosk until, reaching the last of his cover, he was able to stop and study as much as the lamp showed him inside.
The little building was of great elegance: a marriage of Fez and Granada, with flowered tiles and fine marquetry and, above, a honeycomb of rose-coloured stucco like a flower-form sheathing the chamber. Inside, there was a single divan, draped and set with fine cushions, and a rug on the floor. She is not one, Archie Abernethy had once said, who has ever looked young, nor would she ever look less than beautiful. Black hair she has, you would say like a barrel of pitch; and queer, light eyes that look through you, and a neck you could put your one hand around. That is Oonagh O’Dwyer.
The woman sitting there, straight and still on the bright velvet cushions, was not young; nor was she less than beautiful. The black hair, loose and shining, and deep, fell back over her shoulder and forward down to her waist; her chin was high above the pure line of her neck, which you could have held in one hand. Her eyebrows were black, and arched in pride, or surprise, or over some deep, long-held thought; and below the black, silky lashes, the wide eyes were packed full of straw.
5
Algiers
Fighting for the Order in Malta, sub suave jugo Christi, Jerott Blyth had seen many things. He knew what man could do to man; he knew, given primitive nature and primitive provocation, what of suffering and what of brutalization and what, sometimes, of nobility could ensue.
So he turned his back on that elegant kiosk and, closing his eyes, leaned against the smooth birch-tree bark until the sickness cleared from his brain and the blackness from his sight and until the turmoil was locked hard within him.
He did not look again, after that, at that cold, lighted arbour. He sheathed his sword and whistled; and at an answering whistle, strode through the dark garden, heedless of noise, to find Francis Crawford.
Lymond stood, a taut shadow on some dim, arcaded path, and said, ‘What?’ sharply as Jerott appeared. Then as Jerott, breathing hard, suddenly found himself speechless, the other man soundlessly joined him. In the dark, he could not read Jerott’s face. But he said, as if he had, ‘Lead on. I’ll follow you.’
The pond this time was not a vista but a panorama, laid out before them, with the kiosk in profile on their left. Faced with the sparkling garden; the pool, the plash of live water against the shadowy trees and the mellow, innocent light from the tiny kiosk, Lymond stopped and Jerott stood with him.
Lymond said, ‘It’s all right: you don’t have to tell me. She is in the kiosk. And dead.’ His face in the strange silver light was neither full of pain nor distraught. He had expected it, Jerott realized. He had braced himself hard against death; and for the reality, he was quite unprepared. Jerott spoke, his voice steady.