Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
‘There is only one such, between Dragut Rais’s departure and now. More, the man Shakib has been seen with him.’ He paused, and then said, ‘The señor will forgive me, but his clothes have been burned. The chain and jewels we placed in this purse.’
‘They are for your Imám,’ said Lymond. ‘If he will pray for a heretic?’
Salablanca was quicker than Jerott. ‘For la señora?’ he asked. ‘She is with God. One has said: There is not any soul born, but its place in Paradise or Hell has been written.’
‘What we choose to do then is nothing?’ said Lymond, and his face was not pleasant. ‘I have taken far too long as it is to face the consequences of my actions. You must not unlearn me my lesson. I have several other tests, still more acid, to pass.’
It was a quick, bitter memory, which Jerott better than Salablanca understood. Of a dark room, and a lit candle, and Lymond’s voice asking, ‘Shall we meet?’
And: ‘You will see her,’ was what the Dame de Doubtance had said.
The journey to the harbour in Salablanca’s company through that humid, grey dawn was without accident. Under the bright canopy of the Dauphiné, soaked with night rains, lights glimmered, and someone came soft-footed to the rail to lower a plank. Lymond, stopping, turned to Salablanca, his face blanched under the white hood. ‘We owe you no less than our lives. Remember us. Serve your family well. And live with your own sons’ sons, full of years.’
The black eyes smiled, but Salablanca, bowing, was grave. ‘It shall be done; but presently. Now, I come to serve you.’
Lymond had not expected it. His brow creased, and he said, ‘I am honoured; but you are free. Your father needs you and has welcomed you home. I cannot thus repay his care of us.’
‘It was he,’ said Salablanca gently, ‘who, when I broached such a subject, enjoined me to come. I have brothers. I have no wish to stay here, other than for the term of your visit. I wish to make my fortune with you.’
‘Well, you can forget about that, for a start,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God’s sake hang on to it. Because we’re going in the opposite direction.’
But he gave him his hand, as did Jerott; and without lingering they walked up the gangplank, gave the password and boarded the Dauphiné.
Philippa, who had sat up worrying half the night, did not in the end hear them come, having dropped into heavy sleep just before dawn.
It had been a day she did not particularly want to repeat; with the leaderless return of Lymond’s escort, with orders to unload arms and deliver them to the Viceroy, and the further news that Mr Crawford and Jerott were still at the palace and were not to be sought out, however late they might be. It was Jerott’s lieutenant, reassuring her, who told her that by this means Lymond had bought time and opportunity to search for Oonagh O’Dwyer. As the day wore on, the thought comforted her less and less.
Nor did the climate on board the Dauphiné help. These shining caseloads of carbines being transferred so promptly into infidel hands had started a rustle of unease among soldiers and seamen. Archie Abernethy, who had pursued his strange career in the royal menageries of Moslem and Christian throughout Europe and Asia before serving with Lymond, could not entirely keep his mind on his chosen mission to torment Onophrion Zitwitz; and Onophrion himself, each time he returned from market with his train of small naked boys bearing food-laden baskets, became gloomier and gloomier still. Although that, Philippa conceded, was due rather more to the strain of providing a royal banquet at short notice and with inadequate supplies for a Moslem dignitary with numerous religious restraints on his diet, and an uncountable force of attendants.
It rained. Marthe, undisturbed, sat on her bed reading, and emerged only for the formal intake of food. Even when Maître Gaultier, with an unusual flush under his dark skin, slipped on board after dark, greeted them, and then proceeded to stroll restlessly up