Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [91]
‘It is said,’ said the Aga Morat, ‘that blindness of the eyes is a lighter thing than blindness of the perceptive faculties of the mind. The sun is high: the perception is dazzled. One has made divers chambers available to us in these poor houses for an hour. Let us retire and, by giving ease to the flesh, bring new light also to the proper functions of the mind. There, for the Hakim’s servant Mr Blyth, and the lady. In this chamber, Crawford Efendi and I shall have much to discuss.… Sweet to be taken up, you say, as medicine is by the lip. Such a creature I enjoy, thin-skinned, tender and delicate, light of flesh and goodly in make, impulsive in walk and beautiful in the justness of stature. Communing thus, shall not our dreaming souls melt?’
For a moment, Lymond did not reply. Then he said, in the same level voice, ‘It is written before God, that after this hour we depart all four, in good health to Djerba?’
The Aga Morat had risen. Looking down, his heavy face creased in a smile. ‘It is written,’ he said.
Slowly, Lymond rose also. He looked neither at Jerott nor at Marthe, but stepped straight out from under the awning and confronted the Aga. In the blinding white light, the fine lines of his skin were all suddenly visible, and his eyes by contrast quite dark. But his hair, uncut since Marseilles, shone mint-gold in the sun. ‘If it is so agreed,’ Lymond said, ‘I am solicitous for thee, as thou art for me.’ And without pausing, he followed the Aga Morat into the house.
It was all Jerott waited to see. Before they pulled him into the room he was to share with Marthe and Salablanca he had fallen into an uneasy sleep; and, muttering, was hardly aware when, the hour ended, they were brought out and mounted again. Carried, finally, by Salablanca’s wide pommel he knew little of the brief journey to Djerba when, leaving the wilderness behind, they flew to the shore and across the crumbling causeway to where the island stood on the hot blue horizon: a single line of silvery sand and the fronded green of uniform palms.
Forced awake, briefly, by the splashing as eight hundred hooves sought the square, sunken stones Jerott confirmed again that his companions were there: Salablanca beside him, unchanging; Marthe beyond, her lips tight and blue circles printing the white skin under her eyes. Then he looked for Lymond, and found him after a while, riding alone, among Arabs, his gaze directed ahead. Jerott closed his eyes, and relaxed.
He opened them in the prison they were to inhabit until Dragut Rais returned to his home; a prison of fountains and palm trees and the music of soft-feathered song-birds weaving slight winds like the flyers of the spinning-wheel from perch to perch of their cage. Roses grew by his pillow and petted carp swam to his hand in raised channels of marble veined in pink and in blue. He lay on silk and fed from black hands on new bread and nectarines and sea food seethed in fresh milk.
The négresses could not answer his questions. It was three days before, in the light warmth of new morning, they took his carpet and cushions out to the patio and, lying there, he saw the robed girl sitting near him was Marthe. ‘So. Correct in faith, and the adversary of death. You survived,’ said the girl.
‘So it seems. Francis and Salablanca?’
‘They survived also. The Aga Morat has gone. We are here to await Dragut Rais’s pleasure.’
Jerott glanced round. Beyond the low walls that enclosed them he could see hedges of cypress and myrtle, and the soft hide of ripe oranges showed among the gloss of ranked trees behind them. It seemed less a castle than a loose pattern of kiosk and courtyard, joined by steps and archways and low colonnaded ways hung with vines. He said, ‘The problem of escape isn’t an agonizing one, is it? I’m sorry I moulted my flight feathers. What are Francis’s plans?’
Marthe turned on him her wide, deliberate blue stare. She had lost flesh, Jerott thought. Although her extreme pallor had gone, there was about her an odd hint of tension and violence, which was not to be wondered