Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [90]
On the edge of consciousness, Jerott saw the scene as he was cut from his horse: the silken thighs and underfed ribs of the girl as she swayed round and round, smiling vaguely, under the prod of her handler; the intent black eyes of the Turk, as he sat crosslegged on the latticed shade of his carpet, the jewel-handled knives glinting dimly in the silk of his sash, and in his turban the Pasha’s feather in gold.
In the shadows behind him, Francis Crawford, resting at ease, stirred, and murmured in Arabic, ‘… No. I favour the other. Sweet to be taken up, as medicine is by the lip; sweet as the swelling out of the new moons, and full. Take the other.’
‘It shall be,’ said the Aga Morat comfortably, and snapping his fingers, followed the girl with his eyes as she was forced away, running. Then he turned. ‘Ah. Mr Blyth. I have been sharp with thy friends. Thou wilt in thy heart forgive me, for as a stone with which perfume is bruised, I release thereby the truth. It is long since I entertained a Knight Hospitaller of your Order.’
Swaying, Jerott stood in the sun, hanging on to his saddle. In Lymond’s averted blue gaze he found no advice and no help. He said, ‘As Mr Crawford I am sure will have told you, Lord, I am no longer of the Order.’ The brute was not only gross: he was scented. Competing with the reek of sweat, of spiced food, of blood Jerott inhaled unspeakable emanations of sweet basil and spikenard.
‘It is strange,’ said the Aga agreeably. ‘Doubly strange, when so short a time past thou exerted thyself at Tripoli so mightily. Triply strange, when at Mehedia, I am told, thou wast vehement in proclaiming the attachment. He who now calls himself Crawford was in Mehedia no more than the steward of this lady. And this lady, whom I am asked to believe is a Frenchwoman, there called herself a noblewoman of Italy. How may one poor in understanding as myself resolve such a tangle?’
Lymond’s voice, speaking from under the canopy, was bored. ‘By taking us, as I have said, to Dragut Rais, who will make all things clear.’
‘But verily,’ said the Aga Morat, ‘when the prince is absent or niggardly with his permission, I am able to take permission of myself when I will. The lady is fair.’
‘The lady,’ said Lymond, ‘is the special care and interest of Henri of France. To thy intelligence it must be clear that this thing must be hidden from the fools at Mehedia. Further, it is she who is to present to the Grand Signor himself the gift we convey to Stamboul from France. Should she fail from weakness or excess of the sun, the Sultan cannot be pleased.’
‘She may sit,’ said the Aga Morat. ‘And Mr Blyth also, while we exert ourselves in this affair. It is suggested I take you all three in custody to Dragut Rais’s castle, there to await his pleasure when he returns?’
‘We are your servants,’ said Lymond. Huddled in some haphazard patch of shade, where Marthe’s strong hand had led him, Jerott distinguished a note in that level voice he had not heard before. Looking up, straining, however, he could detect no bodily signs of fatigue or unendurable stress. Lymond, on the contrary, sat with picturesque grace, his head bare, his doublet dusty but untouched, his shapely hands lying loose.
Then Jerott observed something further. As he was studying him, so the Aga Morat’s eyes rested on Francis Crawford also with a curious and vivid attention. And unlike Lymond’s, the Aga Morat’s plump hands were locked hard together: clean