Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [61]
‘If I hadn’t been drunk,’ said Jerott, annoyed, ‘Leone Strozzi wouldn’t have gone off with those papers.’
Slowly, Lymond rested a hand on the table and found his way round to his seat. ‘Do you believe he will make a good Grand Master?’
‘He’s a brilliant soldier and seaman, and a fine defence engineer. He’s ambitious, but he’s also an active leader, and that they desperately need.’
Lymond said, ‘He has a feud with Cosimo de Medici to which he and his brother have dedicated their lives. You know that as well as I do. He will wield the Order of St John like an assassin’s knife for his own private purposes. He has not the stature to resist it.’
Jerott propped his head on his two hands, and surveyed Lymond with his tired eyes. ‘He thinks your quarrel with Gabriel is of the same order.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ said Lymond. He said, without looking up, ‘I am going to follow Strozzi to Malta. That is why I must have the women out of the way.’
Jerott’s hands crashed on the table. ‘But that is insane! You said as much yourself, before we set out! You are stepping on Gabriel’s own territory, in the reign of a Grand Master who hates everything French, and on the heels of the indictment Strozzi is carrying. It’s a folly that satisfies nothing but your own need for action.… Look …’ With an unsteady hand and a great deal of stubborn determination, Jerott Blyth found another fresh glass, uplifted the great flask of malmsey, poured, with uncertain success, a quantity of the one into the other, and pushed it for the second time between the open, unmoving hands of the man sitting opposite. ‘Drink, Francis. You must: believe me. Let go, and drink; and give yourself a few hours of peace.’
An hour later, Philippa, with all her baggage, with Fogge, with Archie Abernethy and four stout men-at-arms, crossed the tabernacle on her way down to the caique. She was being sent home. Onophrion had told her; and had told her too, doubtfully, what she had wanted to know about Leone Strozzi’s inexplicable visit. Into his hands, Lymond had confided the proof of Gabriel’s villainy. Gabriel’s exposure was imminent, but not his death at Lymond’s hands. She was free of that dread; free to take what time she needed to follow this frail and unlikely clue; to go to Zakynthos, if she could prevail on Archie to take her; and to seek the child of whom the Dame de Doubtance had spoken.
She was glad to go. Glad, in spite of herself, to be spared the society of Marthe, and achingly glad to be plucked from the unhappy muddle between herself and her mother’s strange friend, Mr Crawford. Never again, she had said to herself over and over, as she sat shivering in the longboat beside Marthe, with the sea lapping round them, waiting for the corsair’s guns to start firing, and the signal which would mean their boat would be set rowing, escaping in the dark night to the Tunisian shore while the Dauphiné lay dwindling behind them. Never again, if she lived to escape from all this, would she force sympathy or arch female attentions on a man, whatever his seniority.
Steeling herself to meet Lymond again, for the formal farewells, she was surprised and also shamefully relieved when Onophrion hesitated, and then shook his head. ‘Mademoiselle, if you will permit, I think it better to send your leave-taking messages through me.’
‘Why?’ said Philippa. She liked Onophrion.
Onophrion coughed. ‘It is merely that … gentlemen under stress are sometimes under the necessity of taking certain steps … incompatible with the usages of polite female society.’
Philippa’s brown eyes shone with dawning intelligence. ‘Mr Crawford is drunk?’
‘I trust so, mademoiselle,’ said Onophrion.
The lamp had burned low in the captain’s cabin when Philippa passed, a moment or two later, and she did not care to stop and look in. Only she had an impression of broken glass, and a foetid aroma of malmsey, and of two hands, clasped outflung on the table, with a still head resting between them. It was the last memory of the Dauphiné