Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [42]
Lymond said, ‘What has he done?’ but under his breath: he did not want or wait for an answer. Nor did he hurry. Rooted, by a kind of desperate courtesy, to the grass where he was standing, Jerott watched the other man walk down alone, fair hair ghostly against the ctesiphon pattern of water, towards the softly lit room at the end.
Lymond had undipped and dropped the dark cloak, and on his shoulders the Viceroy’s tissue fell straight and flat, the emeralds distantly sparkling. Jerott saw him check, violently, at what must have been his first glimpse of the woman within. Then he recovered, and walked steadily on to stand, nearer than Jerott had done, full in the light of the lamp. But, like Jerott, a moment’s glance was all he could bear; and then he closed his hands over his face.
For a long time he stood there, the yellow hair laced over his taut fingers; as still as the queenly, naked simulacrum of the lovely woman who had been Oonagh O’Dwyer. Then Lymond moved; and suddenly, with all his force, swung round a fist in a gesture which even at that distance conveyed a fury of abomination. The lamp, swept from its perch, crashed to the floor of the kiosk, and darkness fell on the grove.
The fountains hissed. Moving forward a step, Jerott could see nothing now in that chill pleasure-house, nor could he detect any movement to hint what Francis Crawford might do. His voice quiet, Jerott called. ‘Francis … if you want something done, let me do it.’
‘I have done it,’ said Lymond. And came towards and past Jerott with the swift, easy walk which was one of his attributes; tailored shoulders outlined against a new, orange light, freshly born, which flickered, gained strength, pounced and weaved its way up from the floor of the kiosk and finally fastened, sparkling and avid, on its food.
Jerott could not follow at first. Instead, numb and unmoving, he stood and watched the fire of the other man’s making: watched it seize on the wood and the fabric, on the black hair and on the stuff of the couch. The feet flared, and the hands buckled like gloves in her lap. But before leaving Francis had cast about Oonagh O’Dwyer’s shoulders, in the darkness his white and miniver cloak. All the rest of her it concealed, as the emeralds, blackening, cracked and fell and the white fur, smoking, turned yellow and brown.
Jerott turned away then. Only once, as the whole pavilion caught and blazed like a jewel in the night, he looked back and saw the fur gone and the woman’s body translucent as a beautiful lamp; eyes and mouth circles of fire in the hollow rind of the face. Then Jerott choked aloud and, wheeling, launched himself with all the power in his legs after the man in whose living arms she had once lain.
Later, Jerott Blyth was to realize that Lymond for a short time forgot he existed: that, leaving the fire he had kindled with that hideous lamp, he had walked straight back through the garden and up to the house, had hammered on the door and had burst without pausing into the occupied room among the women and children. At the time, racing anxiously through the garden, whistling and calling, Jerott heard the screams and, avoiding the house, found and climbed one of the perimeter walls and walked along it, scanning the street. He sensed, more than saw, the dark movement far along the same wall when Lymond, at its extremity, came to scale and drop over it and then, moving fast, vanished into a mesh of black alleys in the opposite direction. Balancing in his turn, Jerott jumped; and then, running lightly and fast, set himself grimly to follow.
Once before, under the bright sun of Malta, this merciless race had been run. Then Jerott, overtaking the man he disliked and mistrusted, had prevented Lymond from making the journey which might have kept Oonagh O’Dwyer out of Dragut Rais’s hands. Running now; following those faint, echoing footsteps through tunnel and archway, round courtyard and market, Jerott wondered whether, coming fresh from