Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [75]
‘Ali-Rashid is dead,’ said Lymond sharply; and Salablanca spoke quickly. ‘Señor Blyth went to try and trace the little one at a silk-farm. A dervish directed us to a village outside Mehedia.’
Lymond had stopped crumbling bread. ‘He went alone? When?’
‘Alone, yes. This afternoon, señor.’
‘It’s quite close, and perfectly safe,’ said Marthe. ‘And unlike Christians, Bektashis do tell the truth.’
‘Some of it,’ said Lymond. ‘It was a Bektashi dervish who stopped me outside the Bedouin camp and told me the same. It’s still Gabriel’s circuit. Jerott’s just cut across two of the stages, that’s all.’
He stopped only to change before setting off again, on a fresh horse, with both Marthe and Salablanca this time beside him. It took them a good part of the evening to find the right farm, and then to learn that the stranger who had called that afternoon had gone to visit the silk-farmer’s sister in Mehedia. ‘There was a boy the gentleman wanted to buy,’ said the old man who received them. ‘A young boy with his nurse. He offered much money.’
‘Rightly so. Your family will be rich,’ Lymond said. ‘How would we reach this house of your daughter?’
‘Thus you will reach it,’ said the old man, and described the place: as he finished he put out, unhurried, one arm to restrain their departure. ‘… But not until tomorrow, Efendi. Now none may enter Mehedia. Now the gates are closed for the night.’
Experienced in battle, and owning many masters, the city of Mehedia occupied a narrow neck of land washed on three sides by the sea, and contained a citadel within its high walls, whose ramparts, towers and battlements held a great arsenal of cannon. Beside the harbour, large and sheltered, was a smaller railed basin where galleys might lie.
Once dominated by Spanish-controlled Tunis, the Moors and Mohammedans who lived there had revolted against Turks and Christians alike, and set up a commonwealth which Dragut Rais had destroyed, installing his own nephew as Governor instead.
It was a double insult which the old Emperor could not afford to sustain. Three years ago Jerott had sailed for Mehedia in his engraved armour with the eight-pointed cross of Malta on his cloak. Three years ago the Emperor’s admiral Andrea Doria with his own fleet, with the Pope’s galleys, with the Viceroy of Sicily and galleys and troop ships from Naples, and with the fleet of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Malta under Bailiff Claude de la Sengle had attacked Mehedia in blazing midsummer, and had taken it.
It had not been done without cost. One hundred and forty Knights and four hundred troops from the Order had left Birgu with Jerott, but not all had returned. There had been lavish plunder, in the end: gold, silver and jewels; and over seven thousand slaves had been taken from here by the Christians; and the son of the Viceroy, Don John de Vega, installed as Governor. The Viceroy, Jerott had no trouble in recalling, had claimed the honour of victory. To Jerott’s mind that belonged to Claude de la Sengle, who had made a hospital of his tents and called on his Knights to leave the fighting in turn and attend to the sick.
So it was now held, but with difficulty. Behind the slow rising ground through which he had just ridden, with its orchards and vineyards, lay the mountains, and behind them the vast plains where the Arabs pastured their animals. So large and hostile a territory, so far from the succour of Europe, was a burden on the Emperor which he would gladly, it was rumoured, have passed to the Knights of St John. Until now, the Knights of St John had been wise enough to ignore it. Riding through the studded gates of Mehedia in the dark, Jerott bent his dark face within the fall of his head-cloth, and did not look at the torches. This soil belonged to Spain and the Emperor, who was France’s bitterest enemy. And he was no longer a Knight, but Scottish-French, and on a French embassy. One mistake, and Gabriel’s revenge would be part-way complete.
The house of the silk-farmer’s sister lay in a crooked lane hardly wide enough for a horse, but the arched doorway