Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [70]
‘What sand?’ said Jerott.
‘Don’t be pessimistic,’ said Lymond. ‘Ali-Rashid wants that extra money. There’ll be sand and prints and maze-toothed Labyrinthodontia if need be. And to save you further effort, I’ll repeat, you are not coming with me.’
‘And Marthe?’ said Jerott with animosity. In three days their caravan would have left Monastir.
‘Yes. Marthe. Won’t it be interesting,’ said Lymond thoughtfully, ‘to see whether Marthe elects to move on without us, or whether she stays here with you? Especially as Salablanca has sewn all the rest of the money into her saddle.’
She elected to stay. When, after three days, their caravan did move on, Salablanca found lodgings for Marthe and Jerott and himself in a village near by, and they settled down, in the highest discomfort, to wait.
Not that Marthe was idle. Against Jerott’s advice, she rode almost daily, in her boy’s clothes, in and out of the small towns of the shoreline and came back, brisk and calm, with a string of sardonic anecdotes concerning her day’s observations, and no account at all of her own employment, whatever it was.
In some ways, Lymond’s absence seemed to have brought to her a sense of release. Though still self-possessed, she lost a little the disdainful detachment which so incensed Jerott, and as neither he nor Salablanca showed any interest in the femininity within the doublet and hose, she began, with a characteristic dry intelligence, to take her share of the exchanges, social, speculative, essential, between the two men whose lives, wittingly or not, she had elected to share.
On the fourth or fifth day after Lymond’s departure, Marthe spent several hours behind the walls of Monastir. Like most of the coastal strip at this point, the city was in Spanish hands, and if it were known that any members of a French embassy, however loosely attached, were living disguised in the neighbourhood, they would all, Jerott know, receive short shrift. He was relieved therefore when she came back, undisturbed and even complacent, in the late afternoon, in the company of the men and women from the village who supplied Monastir daily with fowl, meat, vegetables and eggs, and whom she used as her protection.
Jerott had no reason to challenge her wit. For a woman, it seemed to him at times excessive to tiresomeness. Now, almost before Salablanca could take her horse, she said, ‘There is a dervish hermit just outside the village, and I am told they are great bringers of news. Might a woman talk to him without offence, Salablanca?’
‘If he is a Bektashi Baba,’ said Salablanca. ‘That is an Order which admits women to its worship. But not otherwise. Why, wouldst thou reveal thyself to such a one?’
‘It is best to be honest … sometimes,’ said Marthe. ‘Will you come with me?’
It was the first time she had even remotely indicated that she found their company necessary. ‘We’ll both come,’ said Jerott. ‘But I’m not sure what you expect. Stray children are rather beneath their level of interest.’
‘I was concerned rather with stray adults,’ said Marthe briefly. ‘For if you are prepared to wear the year through with your needlework, awaiting our dear Mr Crawford, I must confess I am not. If he has had his throat cut, it would be a convenience to know it.’
‘I see. Have you ever seen a Bedouin camp?’ Jerott said, his voice deceptively gentle. ‘Their tents are black, or brown, with a huddle of chickens and goats, and their women are nearly naked, with a brass or silver ring in one nostril, and beads, and blue tattooing on their lips and their cheeks and their arms. The children have lice and pot bellies and open starvation sores on their faces, and their eyes are half blind and overgrown like a black and blue lichen with flies. That is where this child is being brought up.’
‘Calm yourself,’ said Marthe wearily. ‘I am sure the unfortunate creature, if not happily dead, will be snatched from these horrors forthwith by its sire. I want only to know when I can hope to get away from the chickpeas and couscous and back to Onophrion’s cooking.’
‘If you wish