Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [81]
Another scream. ‘The fit!’ said Lymond.
The captain strode to the door. Another scream. And another.
The captain flung the door open. Anxiously, Lymond called. ‘If she undresses, I pray you do not restrain her! It can cause untold injury!’
The captain ran out but did not forget, in going, to close and lock the guardroom door on the two men behind him. Then he fairly raced round the guardwalk.
It was empty. But over one wall there trailed a fragment of what was once a woman’s gauze veil. And on the paved path below, as, pallid, he leaned over and sought it, was a crumpled heap which had once been a woman’s bright dress, with the marvellous string of baroque pearls still entwined in its folds. Silently, the captain turned and made with speed for the stairs.
Marthe watched him go, from where she lay flat on the roof in her tunic and hose, the blonde hair again bundled into its cap. When he was quite out of sight, she dropped to the walk and turning the key of the guardroom with both her small, strong-boned hands, opened it for Lymond and Salablanca to walk through. ‘Ad unum mollis opus? said Marthe.’ ‘Make the most of it, Mr Crawford. This is my single dissolute act for tonight.’
And soft-footed beside them, she slipped down the unguarded stairs and past the knot of excited men searching the path, and into the dark narrow ways of Mehedia.
Soberly hooded, and without chain and cap, Lymond led them direct to the house of the silk-farmer’s sister. It was easy to find, for desultory fires burned here and there, although the looting had now almost stopped, since there was nothing left to take away. They stepped into the courtyard through which the stout silk-farmer had led Jerott that evening, the door hanging burst and splintered behind them, and through another smashed hole found their way into the house.
There was no one there; but what had been there was not hard to tell. Working swiftly from room to room, they were silent. The looters had taken the silk cushions, the carpets and the braziers. They had taken the fine sheets and the mats and the copper dishes for meat. But they had left, permeating everywhere, the sickening smell of the perfume; the odour of drugs; the peculiar reek of sensual abomination. And they had left the small mats, the low, dirty hand-marks and the worn toys of children.
It did not take long. Salablanca found the courtyard at the back, with the carpenter’s litter of shavings still burning, and the charred hut beyond. It had remained fairly intact although its roof and doorway had gone, and the walls were blackened inside where some kind of fittings had burned. There was a great heap of black powder also at one point on the floor, which gave off throat-catching fumes when Lymond stirred it. Marthe said, ‘That’s silk.’
‘What? in the cocoon, you mean?’ They were the first words Lymond had spoken.
‘I’ve smelt that in Lyons, when there’s been a fire at the mills. The fumes are deadly, if they’re enclosed in a small space.’
This was a small, enclosed space, ‘Lymond said. This was perhaps where the fire started. Sparks would carry to the woodpile outside, and from there to the house.’
‘It’s not only that,’ said Marthe. ‘It’s been deserted. You don’t find a place like this picked clean by looters if the family stood by.’
Lymond said, ‘If he was in there, with the gas: would he have a chance?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marthe. ‘But if he did survive, he’d be in no state to evade murderous silk-farmers. He’s probably dead. If he isn’t dead, there’s only one safe place he can be.’
‘The castle,’ Lymond agreed.
Marthe sighed. Pulling off the cap, she shook out her long hair and with careful fingers undid the points of her tunic and pulled that off too. Released from its waistband, her shift fell, in modest if slatternly folds, to the ground. ‘Resurrection,’ she said, ‘of Donna Maria Mascarenhas, undressed, refitted and safely recovered by her steward. I flung off my skirt, screaming