Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
The colour increased in the dark, Florentine face, engorging the narrow brow and muscular cheeks and high, vulpine nose. ‘And is this,’ said Leone Strozzi, ‘your condition for delivering them to me?’
‘Yes,’ said Lymond.
This time the silence was a long one, broken by the angry, uneven breathing of the man standing at Jerott’s side. Jerott said nothing. No one needed to stress the perils in the game Lymond was playing. It balanced on a knife-edge, the quick-tempered violent pride of Leone Strozzi, brought face to face with the ultimatum in Lymond’s words. Then the Prior of Capua, releasing his breath, pulled out his chair again and sitting down, said, ‘And if I were to be elected against my will? A man may make his desires plain, M. Crawford, and Fate may still take a hand.’
It was capitulation. Jerott didn’t know if it was what Lymond wanted, but he didn’t now care. As Lymond drew breath to reply, Jerott said, ‘As a former Knight I can pledge that we understand that. On that basis, I am sure, there can be no reason for withholding these papers.’
Lymond sat up, an edge on his voice. ‘On what basis? That M. Strozzi announces that he has no desire to stand as a future Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers of St John, and then reluctantly allows himself in the event to be over-persuaded?’
Jerott, his cheeks flushed, outstared him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What better chance have you got?’
‘None, now,’ said Lymond; and rising sharply to his feet, walked round the table. ‘M. Strozzi, on these terms the papers are yours. I shall bring them. I have also a favour to ask. I understood you to say that you have been offered safe harbour in Sicilian anchorages, and the Emperor’s favour in Sicily?’
‘That is true.’ Savouring his wine, the Prior of Capua leaned back and smiled.
Lymond said, ‘I have some women on board whom I wish conveyed back to France. If I understand you aright, you are now on your way back to Malta with your … activities at sea now at an end. Might I beg that you take these women on board, with a suitable escort, and land them at Messina for me, with whatever safe-conduct the Governor can provide for their journey? As an Ambassador of France, you will understand, my approaches to the Governor might be less successful.’
Leone Strozzi did not ask if this were another condition. Expansively: ‘But of course! This will be my especial care,’ said the Prior. ‘As if they were your mother, your sister, they shall be treated.’
Lymond stared at him. Then: ‘Forgive me. I shall get the papers,’ he said; and swung out.
Leone Strozzi was smiling at Jerott. ‘A formidable master. He has turned very grim, si? You did not know him when he sowed his wild oats? My brother Piero tells a story of a wedding—was it a boy called Will Scott?—and a flock of sheep who routed an army.’
‘Will Scott is dead,’ said Jerott. ‘I’ve been with Lymond for the last eighteen months.’
‘And it is true?’ said the Prior. ‘No laughter? No drinking? No love?’
Onophrion, on Lymond’s orders, had gone below to prepare Philippa and Marthe and the rest for their journey: Strozzi and he were alone. Jerott had no desire to discuss Lymond’s affairs. But it was no undue distortion, he thought, as he smiled and shrugged, of Lymond’s life in the last eighteen months. Only once in all that time had he, Jerott, seen him affected by drink; and then his reasons had been strictly professional. What happened afterwards, Jerott preferred to forget. And as for women, apart from that one brief episode in Baden, he knew of only two. One had been a child of fifteen: Gabriel’s sister. The other, by hearsay only, had been Oonagh O’Dwyer. And each, in its way, had been a single, cold-blooded act of expediency. Aloud, Jerott said, ‘It isn’t as monotonous as it sounds.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Leone Strozzi, playing with his glass, ‘one does not beget a bastard out of thin air. I hear he is offering incredible rewards for the return of some child—a pawn of prestige, I assume, in his feud with