Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [60]
The night air coming through the open doorway was cold. Jerott shivered a little and rose to pour more wine for the Prior and himself. He said, ‘It is more than personal enmity, M. Strozzi. Graham Malett is an intelligent, unstable man who is desperate for power. He has to be stopped.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Leone Strozzi. ‘But why by the gloomily reformed M. Crawford in particular? Were they rivals for power? Is it revenge, or jealousy, or envy, or slighted love even? M. d’Enghien’s pursuit of your friend was notorious, I am told.…’
He raised his eyebrows at Jerott’s darkened, magnificent face. ‘Such a severe masculine aura about the Dauphiné. Even the women, one discovers, are to be put off.’
Jerott Blyth looked at the table, took a very deep breath and, in a voice only a little thickened by malmsey and the desire to kick M. Leone Strozzi into the sea, said, ‘As you will see when the papers come, there is proof that Graham Malett had been betraying the Order for some time to the Turks while on Malta. He then went to Scotland and made an attempt to take control of the very efficient fighting arm we—Mr Crawford had built up; and finally of the nation itself. It was through Mr Crawford that these threats came to nothing. In the process, Graham Malett’s own sister died, and a great many of our own friends. Once, perhaps, Graham Malett hoped to make of Lymond more than a friend. He knows better now.’
‘And the child?’
‘It is, as you say, a pawn. If Graham Malett dies, the child dies. It was by this threat that he was able to escape unhurt from Scotland.’
Leone Strozzi’s cynical black eyes, smiling, narrowed. ‘One might set such store upon the heir to a land or a title. But a nameless bastard …? Perhaps your Mr Crawford is not so stable as we judge, after all.’
‘It is a matter of opinion,’ Jerott Blyth said quietly. Through a crashing headache, he listened to the Prior of Capua talking until Lymond arrived, impeccably civil, with the papers, followed closely by Onophrion.
Mr Zitwitz was discomfited. To Lymond’s brief question, he replied in a low voice. ‘Miss Somerville is preparing, sir, and will be ready almost immediately, with her maid and the others. I regret exceedingly that a slight awkwardness has ensued with the other young lady.’
‘Mlle Marthe? What?’
‘She will not go, sir,’ said Onophrion, his voice even more muted. ‘I can by no means persuade her to leave this ship for the Prior’s. She insists on continuing her journey with M. Gaultier and the gift for the Sultan. You will require to speak to her, sir.’
‘Yes. Well,’ said Lymond, turning to Leone Strozzi, ‘it seems that we should be able to send you the ladies within the next hour. If meantime you feel you must return to your ship, we shall not detain you.’
‘I must indeed leave,’ said the Prior, smiling again. He finished placing the precious papers in his purse—the papers which, in due course, were to blacken Gabriel’s name with the Order—and rising, took his filled glass for the last time in his hand. ‘Mr Crawford, in circles less trustworthy than these, it is considered an insult, if not a sign of possible danger, when one’s host refuses to join his guests in their cups. You are a man, perhaps, with whom stronger wines fail to agree. But you will not refuse to drain that glass of yours, I trust, once at least, to mark our present transaction?’
Under the swaying, overhead lamp, Lymond’s face was civilly sceptical. ‘I am really past the age,’ he said pleasantly, ‘when I have to prove myself a man, by drinking or any other means. But I should not like to be lacking in courtesy. Your health, Signor Strozzi.’ And throwing back his head, he did in fact drain his glass.
Jerott poured him another, filled and running crazily over, when they returned after seeing the Prior back to his ship, and for the second time that night Lymond knocked it spinning out of his way to crash on the smooth deck between them, the pieces flicking brokenly to and fro in the rolling