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By Root 2767 0

of course, and even, he deduced, of unacknowledged jealousy that Marthe had not after all left the Dauphiné; and Philippa had displayed a certain nervous irritation during the voyage to Sicily which Archie knew was unusual. Last year in Scotland, as one of Lymond’s master-company of officers, he had met Philippa Somerville and knew her for a lassie of good sense and courage. On the other hand, he was not sure how much she knew of his own doubtful history. Once, long ago, his brother had been Lymond’s right-hand man in the days of his outlawry. Once, too, he himself had fought with Lymond in Europe. But all the rest of his life, Archie Abernethy had been something else: he had been a keeper of menageries. Two years before, he had kept the elephants of the Royal House in France.

And before that—a good deal before that—he had been in Constantinople. Except that as menagerie keeper to the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent he was known as Abernaci the Indian, and not as Archibald Abernethy of Partick-head, Glasgow, Scotland. A matter of tactics not so far removed from the truth. India was only one of the countries with which Archie had become familiar in the course of his life. In his professional capacity, he was perfectly capable of conducting Philippa wherever in Europe or Asia she might find reason to go. But what he knew and she didn’t was that, on the other side of the Mediterranean, Francis Crawford was already following the only authentic trace they possessed of a child born to the Irishwoman and sold first to a hovel in Algiers and then, it appeared, to a camel-dealer. Jerott Blyth had told Philippa the child had died on being dispatched overseas as a piece of pure fiction to drive her away.

That the child was dead, Philippa would not believe. That it had been sent to Zakynthos seemed very likely indeed, Archie could see, to one exposed to the Dame de Doubtance’s mystic pronouncements. Unfortunately, although always meticulous to the letter, the Dame de Doubtance’s statements, Archie from past experience was aware, were sometimes a wheen irregular in the spirit of that which they seemed to convey.

So she was a capricious old besom. There was no child at Zakynthos, because the child was known to be still in North Africa. If he, Archie, mentioned that the child was in North Africa, the benighted lassie would turn straight about and sail back to Lymond. If he didn’t, she would go to Zakynthos, draw a blank, and return quietly home. Zakynthos, although it paid yearly tribute to Turkey, was

Venetian-governed and safe. So, thought Archie, grinning his crooked, disingenuous grin; let’s go to Zakynthos together.

He had begun, in the last few weeks, to grow his black beard again. He knew his languages: he could at a pinch take the turban and blend into his old, familiar identity. The girl was young and plain enough to avoid notice, and in cheap clothing even more unremarkable, passing for a tall twelve. Sewn into Archie’s cloak, his baggage, his undershirt was a small fortune in gold which Lymond had supplied for their journey, and part of this Archie used to launch the frail Fogge and her four men-at-arms on their slow journey home. Then, with Philippa, he boarded the English ship Mary, laden with tin, pewter, lead, rabbitskins and kerseys from Newbury and bound for Odysseus’ kingdom.

Unhappily, since Odysseus’ time, the Flower of the Orient had drawn up a few rules. If you wished to enter Zakynthos you had to far la quarantena, and stay ten days at least in the Lazaretto outside Zakynthos to obtain your sede for the three signors of health.

It was a pleasant enough place, consisting of single stone cells built round a patio and low-roofed, of necessity because of the earthquakes. And although the windows to the outside were small and stoutly latticed in fir, they were allowed to walk in the courtyard and sit in the shade of the fig tree, and the guardian, who lived with his wife over the entrance vault, supplied them with bedding and bought all their needs, as they required, in the town.

Philippa, with a room to herself