Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [64]
Lymond did not make it easy. His dry voice during that meeting still rang, on occasion, in Jerott’s head. ‘I suggest, if you come with me, that you remove from your minds the image of a live human child. We are going to be brought literally hundreds of these, now the size of the reward is known. We are going, if I know Gabriel, to be shown disease and poverty and young children in distress unimaginable. If you are coming, Jerott, you must recognize that nothing can be done for these. They can’t eat money. We can supply them with food for one meal and medicine for one day and it will do nothing but spin out their misery by those few hours longer.…
‘We are looking for one object, which happens to be the key to Graham Malett’s destruction. That is all.’
‘If that is all,’ had said Jerott, ‘why look for it at all?’
‘Now that,’ Lymond had said, ‘is a very good point. I seem to remember making it myself, in fact, last night. Mlle Marthe persuaded me differently. That is why I am now warning you all, Mlle Marthe included, against sentimentality. We are looking for a pawn. And if we succeed in taking it, Gabriel’s pride will be pledged, wherever he is, in attempting to recover it. That attempt, I trust, he will not survive.’
Silent so far, Onophrion Zitwitz had raised his sonorous voice. ‘On what,’ he had asked, ‘does a child of one year endeavour to feed?’
‘Does it matter?’ Jerott Blyth had said bitterly.
The days that followed, Jerott passed in the routine concerns of the voyage, in perfecting with Lymond and Salablanca what he already had of Arabic and of Turkish; and in drinking.
To Lymond’s single disparaging comment on this last, he had answered without civility. ‘I’ve had enough of obedience, chastity, sobriety and poverty. Other men are not frigid, Francis.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Lymond. ‘If you find this whole project unbearably irritating, there is not the slightest reason why you should stay. What else do you find so inflaming? Marthe?’
In spite of himself, Jerott grinned. ‘There’s a girl who hates the sight of you.’
‘She hates, if you notice, anything masculine. I can only recommend that you don’t allow yourself to be drawn to her. And that you either stop drinking, or leave.’
Jerott said nothing until the indifferent gaze, returning, rested on him. Then he said, ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘I mean it. And you can disregard any other conversations we have had on this subject. If you’re desperate for women, you can disembark and buy a Berber slut with a ring through her nose, to the spoil of kissing, tomorrow. No doubt you’ll find it easy to buy a quick passage home.’
High on his cheekbones, the blood stained Jerott’s skin. But he said caustically, ‘I think I might succeed in controlling my ravening hunger. But if I want to drink, I’ll drink, Francis; whether it pleases you or not. If you want me off, put me off. Otherwise, you’ll just have to put up with it, won’t you?’ And he walked out.
Their first official stop was at Bone, although they put off a skiff at Cape Tedele and at Gigeri. The peculiar difficulty of this search was so obvious that it needed no stressing. Apart from Algiers and Bône and one or two others, the rest of the harbours on this coast were closed to them, because they had been taken back by the Emperor in the fighting of the last two or three years, and now came under the Crown of Castile. And the Emperor, of course, was the sworn enemy of France. So Susa, Monastir, Mehedia, the fort of Calibia and most of Tunis itself were out of bounds to the Dauphiné. The only harbours she could frequent were those which paid tribute to Algiers. And from there, undetected if possible, the investigation would have to be prosecuted inland to the forbidden