Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [6]
Sister Anne was not quite so agile. As she clambered after, Lymond’s strong hand closed on her ankle, and she stopped, gasping, and turned.
Against the swirling fogs of battle behind him, Lymond’s lustrous blue eyes surveyed her with an air strictly practical. Ignoring the hubbub approaching, he changed his grip, pinning her hard with her back to the ladder, and, lifting finger and thumb to her chin, ripped the thin cotton bathrobe in two pieces from collar to hem.
They sagged sodden apart, while the blue stare slid over her. The nun said nothing. Then Francis Crawford, grasping her arm, looked up and straight into Philippa’s powerful stare.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Lymond. And the nun, twisting herself from his arms, clambered over the top of the stairway and bolted.
For a moment in time, Francis Crawford halted, looking at Jerott, arrived at Philippa’s side. Steam, exquisitely apt, coiled round all his bare body, and the twist of linen encircling his waist. ‘Did you see that?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Jerott.
‘Good. Come and see more,’ said Lymond, and shot off after the nuns to the robing-room. Philippa followed, slowly, her lips pressed together to stop her chin wobbling, until Jerott told her to stay where she was.
Afterwards she remembered that Lymond had flung open the door of the women’s changing-room just as some old woman pelted out, screaming. Then everyone went in, except herself, and there was a lot of shouting, and after a time an enormous pink man, whom she recognized as the card-player called Zitwitz, dressed in a white muslin chlamys, emerged and crossed to her. ‘You are Philippa Somerville. Let us sit down.’ They sat, beside the ruins of the pool, on a cold, marble bench.
‘I,’ said her large and unusual companion, ‘am Onophrion Zitwitz of Basle, controller of gentlemen’s households. You may address me as Master Onophrion. There has been a sad event, and your friends have asked me to stay with you until it is settled. The two unfortunate ladies are dead.’
After a glottal interval: ‘Dead!’ exclaimed Philippa. ‘How?’
The well-groomed, large-featured head inclined thoughtfully. ‘How, by a knife. The throat of each had been cut. By whom, it is not known. The rooms were empty, but there are several doors. The woman who found them had just come in by another.’
‘Why?’ said Philippa, asking her last question; and the controller stroking his august nose, eyed her before answering.
‘As to that … it is known that the poor ladies were masquerading. They were not, for example, nuns.’
A faint radiance, beginning at the nose, slowly began to inform Philippa’s face. ‘Then perhaps Sister Anne really purloined the money?’
‘She did.’
‘They were thieves?’
‘They were more.’ Master Zitwitz the household controller gave a brief cough. ‘Under the robes, I must in all fairness inform you, both the young lady and the older one were painted.’
‘So that’s why …’ said Philippa, and seizing her drooping, mud-coloured hair, tied it briskly together under her chin. ‘But how did Mr Crawford suspect?’
‘I gather,’ said the controller austerely, ‘that their toenails were orange. In greater detail I did not feel it necessary to inquire.’
He chatted to her, for which she was grateful, until Jerott returned and took her back to their inn.
It was some time later when Francis Crawford was able to leave the scene of the turmoil, and later still when, by arrangement, Jerott and Philippa arrived at the Engel to dine with him.
Crossing the lamplit snow, Jerott was silent. He led Philippa upstairs, knocked on Lymond’s door, and shoving it open demanded grimly, ‘How many batzen did it take to smooth over that little incident?’ Philippa, smiling at the big Moor Salablanca who came to slip off her cloak, knew his anger to be defensive. Her feet were cold. She smoothed down the creased folds of what had been her best farthingale, and wished the buckled hemline showed less, where it had shrunk.
Lymond, standing totally dressed in front of the fire, waited until the door