Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [43]
Lymond, who had been standing quietly at the entrance, moved a little; and the workboy, pulling his fork out of a bin, saw him and whispered in Urdu. ‘M. Abernaci?’ said Francis Crawford.
The boy was frightened. He walked sideways for three steps, saying nothing; then suddenly scuttled and vanished. Within the Keeper’s own tent beyond, the door flap in his hand, a silent, turbaned figure stood watching. Scarred, bearded and withered, the brooding Djinn of the printing presses, Archembault Abernaci, head Keeper of the King of France’s elephants, smiled, displaying gapped, broken black teeth, and summoned with a noiseless raised hand. Lymond passed the elephants and went in.
Inside, it was comfortable, with a bench and several stools, a small chest and a mattress in one corner. There was a cloth of coarse saye on the floor and a stove with the remains of somebody’s meal beside it. Against the canvas was a stand of weapons: a hook, a spear, a sword, several knives and a mahout’s wristband, the five lead-heeled tails hanging limp.
Abernaci stood now by his armoury, immaculate in the high-collared coat, his face within the shining folds of his turban like one of the jewelled crocodiles of Arsinoë. The black eyes stared unmoving at Lymond.
Lymond, weaponless, tattered and damp, gazed back, his head tilted. Then, still silent, he slipped his hand inside the scaly mess of his clothes and brought it out holding a square block of pearwood. It was the block Abernaci had been carving four days before.
The dark man’s eyes flickered. There was a pause; then he broke the silence at last with a soft exclamation in Urdu.
‘I trust,’ said Lymond pleasantly, ‘that the sentiment was polite. You guessed, I should imagine, who had taken it.’
The mahout bowed.
Amusement, irrepressible, pulled at Francis Crawford’s long mouth. ‘God keep us from gyrcarlings and all long nebbit things from the East. There is no need,’ he said, ‘to be so cautious, my butty. I’m from Scotland myself.’
The scar lifted, the black eyes narrowed, and the dreadful teeth within the curling black beard were exposed. ‘Christ. It’s yourself, Mr. Crawford,’ said Archembault Abernaci, Keeper of the Menageries of France, in the purest cadences of Partick, Glasgow, Scotland. ‘It’s yourself; and here I never said sids for fear I was wrong—heigh, heigh.’ And the mahout sank down on the bench puffing and cheeping like a hen with a cold. ‘Heigh, heigh; and the grand head ones of France with a scrape or two where they hadna an itch, but for twa clever lads from the Clyde.’
Lymond laughed aloud; and spinning the block of wood in the air, let it impale itself on the razor-sharp spear, engraved side uppermost. The arms of the house of Culter, crudely peeled from the wood under his eyes by Abernaci in the murk of the sculptor’s big cellar, stared down at them both. Abernaci, his head cocked, studied it fondly, and Lymond said, ‘You left it lying at Hérisson’s, for me to take. How did you guess who I was?’
‘We fought together, you and I,’ said Abernaci, and grinning, hauled off the silk turban. Underneath was a fringed head, trimly bald. Below that, by some alchemy, the nutlike face was pure Scots. ‘When I was between jobs. Ye willna remember. But my brother ye knew. A grand man at arms in his day; and he was with you and your men a good while. He’s dead, I’ve heard tell, but whether it was the drink or the English I never found out.’
Lymond’s voice was sharp. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Abernethy. Erchie Abernethy,’ said the King of France’s mahout, his face blithe.
‘So Turkey Mat was your brother …’ said Lymond, and went on with barely a pause.