Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
‘Then the Dauphiné? The ship should be here,’ Jerott said reasonably. ‘Why don’t they get your uncle and Onophrion over to vouch for us, if they’re so bloody suspicious? I thought that was Francis’s whole object in forcing the Aga Morat to take us to Djerba.’
‘It was,’ said Marthe. ‘He underestimated the local growth of suspicion. The Dauphiné has been impounded. She’s in the pool next to the causeway and my uncle and Mr Zitwitz are on shore. Didn’t you recognize Onophrion’s cooking?’
Jerott sat up. ‘You mean there’s a French captain and a French pilot and a French bos’n and a French ship and a French bloody embassy living on board her, and the Aga Morat still won’t concede we belong to it?’
‘The Aga Morat,’ said Marthe, ‘has nothing to do with it. We are in Dragut Rais’s house now. And Dragut Rais is away. And Dragut Rais’s household don’t feel like taking any risks. Permitte divis caetera, and Deus Dragut isn’t at home.’
From sitting posture, with great skill, Jerott got to his feet. ‘And precisely whom in Dragut Rais’s household,’ he said, ‘are we dealing with?’
The ironic blue gaze studied him. ‘You think you can improve on Mr Crawford’s performance? I applaud you. Go straight through that archway,’ said Marthe, ‘and you will find the whole meeting in conference.’
He was not too bad on his feet, Jerott found. Leaving Marthe smiling her damned smile behind him, he skirted the pool and, picking his way over the thin coloured paving, found the arch and walked slowly through it.
It led, he discovered, to another courtyard, wider than the one he had left, and sheltered by an awning of tasselled white silk. This time there was no pool, but fine rugs lay here and there on the smooth polished paving, and at one end, a shallow flight of steps led to a low, carpeted dais piled high with cushions.
If there was a meeting, it had now broken up. The steps were crowded. Jerott saw Onophrion’s bulk, his back towards him, offering something, it seemed, at the dais: around him slaves chattered, dressed in bright silks with bangles rippling on ankle and arm and a blackamoor, crosslegged, played on a whistle. In the main courtyard Georges Gaultier sat, his placid face brown and unchanged, mending a clock in his old smock of natural flax. Under the diffuse light of the awning the thin wheels glimmered under his flickering fingers and in a small cloth there sparkled the gold cogs and pins: the minute litter lay cherished, like the yellow eggs of the bombyx, thought Jerott, which is not killed but is born with no means to survive. Seeking further, at last he found Lymond, hitched alone on the marble edge of a tub, the clock mask with its two ebony hands held between idle fingers. Jerott made his way towards him, and Lymond looked up.
‘Jerott. How are you feeling?’
It was what Jerott expected him to say, and yet the inflexions today and those of his awakening in the Governor’s prison in Mehedia, still sharp in his mind, were totally different. Then Jerott realized he was comparing two sides of a difficult illness and pushed the thing from his mind. He said, ‘What’ve you done to your hair?’
Lymond’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Cut it,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind. I’ve also shaved, washed behind my ears and trimmed my nails, if you want to inspect them. Personalities aside, what can I do for you?’
Today, Jerott decided suddenly, he did not feel well enough to be mocked. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said briefly, and turned on his heel.
He had not heard, amid the rush of light voices and the tinkling of bells, someone rise and come down the steps: he did not realize as he spun round that