Oh God, thought Jerott. Why not accept the offer, hand over the papers and be glad of it? Why go into all this? But he knew why, and against his reason he knew that this was the quality in Lymond which, through all the ruthlessness and the mockery, fastened him to his side.
Leone Strozzi rose to his feet with a smooth deliberation, a little flush of wine on either dark cheek. ‘I believe you insult me? I believe you imply that there is, in Malta or out of it, a living soul who could accuse a member of the House of Strozzi, a cousin of Queens, a nephew of Pontiffs, of falsifying documents for his own ends? Is that what you say?’
‘Yes, that is what I say,’ said Lymond evenly. ‘Is that not exactly what Graham Malett will do?’
Leone Strozzi remained standing. ‘And your solution?’
Francis Crawford leaned his colourless head back against the glossy panelling, and lifted his eyes to the Prior’s. ‘I have no solution,’ he said. ‘But if I were Leone Strozzi, and I wished to make certain beyond all misadventure that Gabriel never gained control of the Order, I should withdraw my own candidature as a condition of making these papers public.’
The colour increased in the dark, Florentine face, engorging the narrow brow and muscular cheeks and high, vulpine nose. ‘And is this,’ said Leone Strozzi, ‘your condition for delivering them to me?’
‘Yes,’ said Lymond.
This time the silence was a long one, broken by the angry, uneven breathing of the man standing at Jerott’s side. Jerott said nothing. No one needed to stress the perils in the game Lymond was playing. It balanced on a knife-edge, the quick-tempered violent pride of Leone Strozzi, brought face to face with the ultimatum in Lymond’s words. Then the Prior of Capua, releasing his breath, pulled out his chair again and sitting down, said, ‘And if I were to be elected against my will? A man may make his desires plain, M. Crawford, and Fate may still take a hand.’
It was capitulation. Jerott didn’t know if it was what Lymond wanted, but he didn’t now care. As Lymond drew breath to reply, Jerott said, ‘As a former Knight I can pledge that we understand that. On that basis, I am sure, there can be no reason for withholding these papers.’
Lymond sat up, an edge on his voice. ‘On what basis? That M. Strozzi announces that he has no desire to stand as a future Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers of St John, and then reluctantly allows himself in the event to be over-persuaded?’
Jerott, his cheeks flushed, outstared him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What better chance have you got?’
‘None, now,’ said Lymond; and rising sharply to his feet, walked round the table. ‘M. Strozzi, on these terms the papers are yours. I shall bring them. I have also a favour to ask. I understood you to say that you have been offered safe harbour in Sicilian anchorages, and the Emperor’s favour in Sicily?’
‘That is true.’ Savouring his wine, the Prior of Capua leaned back and smiled.
Lymond said, ‘I have some women on board whom I wish conveyed back to France. If I understand you aright, you are now on your way back to Malta with your … activities at sea now at an end. Might I beg that you take these women on board, with a suitable escort, and land them at Messina for me, with whatever safe-conduct the Governor can provide for their journey? As an Ambassador of France, you will understand, my approaches to the Governor might be less successful.’
Leone Strozzi did not ask if this were another condition. Expansively: ‘But of course! This will be my especial care,’ said the Prior. ‘As if they were your mother, your sister, they shall be treated.’
Lymond stared at him. Then: ‘Forgive me. I shall get the papers,’ he said; and swung out.
Leone Strozzi was smiling at Jerott. ‘A formidable master. He has turned very grim, si? You did not know him when he sowed his wild oats? My brother Piero tells a story of a wedding—was it a boy called Will Scott?—and a flock of sheep who routed an army.’
‘Will Scott is dead,’ said Jerott. ‘I’ve been with Lymond for the last eighteen months.’
‘And it is true?’ said the Prior. ‘No laughter? No drinking? No love?’
Onophrion, on Lymond’s orders, had gone below to prepare Philippa and Marthe and the rest for their journey: Strozzi and he were alone. Jerott had no desire to discuss Lymond’s affairs. But it was no undue distortion, he thought, as he smiled and shrugged, of Lymond’s life in the last eighteen months. Only once in all that time had he, Jerott, seen him affected by drink; and then his reasons had been strictly professional. What happened afterwards, Jerott preferred to forget. And as for women, apart from that one brief episode in Baden, he knew of only two. One had been a child of fifteen: Gabriel’s sister. The other, by hearsay only, had been Oonagh O’Dwyer. And each, in its way, had been a single, cold-blooded act of expediency. Aloud, Jerott said, ‘It isn’t as monotonous as it sounds.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Leone Strozzi, playing with his glass, ‘one does not beget a bastard out of thin air. I hear he is offering incredible rewards for the return of some child—a pawn of prestige, I assume, in his feud with Gabriel. Tell me, Blyte—in what does this quarrel lie; this enmity between M. Crawford and Sir Graham?’
The night air coming through the open doorway was cold. Jerott shivered a little and rose to pour more wine for the Prior and himself. He said, ‘It is more than personal enmity, M. Strozzi. Graham Malett is an intelligent, unstable man who is desperate for power. He has to be stopped.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Leone Strozzi. ‘But why by the gloomily reformed M. Crawford in particular? Were they rivals for power? Is it revenge, or jealousy, or envy, or slighted love even? M. d’Enghien’s pursuit of your friend was notorious, I am told.…’
He raised his eyebrows at Jerott’s darkened, magnificent face. ‘Such a severe masculine aura about the Dauphiné. Even the women, one discovers, are to be put off.’
Jerott Blyth looked at the table, took a very deep breath and, in a voice only a little thickened by malmsey and the desire to kick M. Leone Strozzi into the sea, said, ‘As you will see when the papers come, there is proof that Graham Malett had been betraying the Order for some time to the Turks while on Malta. He then went to Scotland and made an attempt to take control of the very efficient fighting arm we—Mr Crawford had built up; and finally of the nation itself. It was through Mr Crawford that these threats came to nothing. In the process, Graham Malett’s own sister died, and a great many of our own friends. Once, perhaps, Graham Malett hoped to make of Lymond more than a friend. He knows better now.’
‘And the child?’
‘It is, as you say, a pawn. If Graham Malett dies, the child dies. It was by this threat that he was able to escape unhurt from Scotland.’
Leone Strozzi’s cynical black eyes, smiling, narrowed. ‘One might set such store upon the heir to a land or a title. But a nameless bastard …? Perhaps your Mr Crawford is not so stable as we judge, after all.’
‘It is a matter of opinion,’ Jerott Blyth said quietly. Through a crashing headache, he listened to the Prior of Capua talking until Lymond arrived, impeccably civil, with the papers, followed closely by Onophrion.
Mr Zitwitz was discomfited. To Lymond’s brief question, he replied in a low voice. ‘Miss Somerville is preparing, sir, and will be ready almost immediately, with her maid and the others. I regret exceedingly that a slight awkwardness has ensued with the other young lady.’
‘Mlle Marthe? What?’
‘She will not go, sir,’ said Onophrion, his voice even more muted. ‘I can by no means persuade her to leave this ship for the Prior’s. She insists on continuing her journey with M. Gaultier and the gift for the Sultan. You will require to speak to her, sir.’
‘Yes. Well,’ said Lymond, turning to Leone Strozzi, ‘it seems that we should be able to send you the ladies within the next hour. If meantime you feel you must return to your ship, we shall not detain you.’
‘I must indeed leave,’ said the Prior, smiling again. He finished placing the precious papers in his purse�
�the papers which, in due course, were to blacken Gabriel’s name with the Order—and rising, took his filled glass for the last time in his hand. ‘Mr Crawford, in circles less trustworthy than these, it is considered an insult, if not a sign of possible danger, when one’s host refuses to join his guests in their cups. You are a man, perhaps, with whom stronger wines fail to agree. But you will not refuse to drain that glass of yours, I trust, once at least, to mark our present transaction?’
Under the swaying, overhead lamp, Lymond’s face was civilly sceptical. ‘I am really past the age,’ he said pleasantly, ‘when I have to prove myself a man, by drinking or any other means. But I should not like to be lacking in courtesy. Your health, Signor Strozzi.’ And throwing back his head, he did in fact drain his glass.
Jerott poured him another, filled and running crazily over, when they returned after seeing the Prior back to his ship, and for the second time that night Lymond knocked it spinning out of his way to crash on the smooth deck between them, the pieces flicking brokenly to and fro in the rolling tide of the wine. Lymond said, ‘I rather think one of us drunk is sufficient.’
‘If I hadn’t been drunk,’ said Jerott, annoyed, ‘Leone Strozzi wouldn’t have gone off with those papers.’
Slowly, Lymond rested a hand on the table and found his way round to his seat. ‘Do you believe he will make a good Grand Master?’
‘He’s a brilliant soldier and seaman, and a fine defence engineer. He’s ambitious, but he’s also an active leader, and that they desperately need.’
Lymond said, ‘He has a feud with Cosimo de Medici to which he and his brother have dedicated their lives. You know that as well as I do. He will wield the Order of St John like an assassin’s knife for his own private purposes. He has not the stature to resist it.’
Jerott propped his head on his two hands, and surveyed Lymond with his tired eyes. ‘He thinks your quarrel with Gabriel is of the same order.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ said Lymond. He said, without looking up, ‘I am going to follow Strozzi to Malta. That is why I must have the women out of the way.’
Jerott’s hands crashed on the table. ‘But that is insane! You said as much yourself, before we set out! You are stepping on Gabriel’s own territory, in the reign of a Grand Master who hates everything French, and on the heels of the indictment Strozzi is carrying. It’s a folly that satisfies nothing but your own need for action.… Look …’ With an unsteady hand and a great deal of stubborn determination, Jerott Blyth found another fresh glass, uplifted the great flask of malmsey, poured, with uncertain success, a quantity of the one into the other, and pushed it for the second time between the open, unmoving hands of the man sitting opposite. ‘Drink, Francis. You must: believe me. Let go, and drink; and give yourself a few hours of peace.’
An hour later, Philippa, with all her baggage, with Fogge, with Archie Abernethy and four stout men-at-arms, crossed the tabernacle on her way down to the caique. She was being sent home. Onophrion had told her; and had told her too, doubtfully, what she had wanted to know about Leone Strozzi’s inexplicable visit. Into his hands, Lymond had confided the proof of Gabriel’s villainy. Gabriel’s exposure was imminent, but not his death at Lymond’s hands. She was free of that dread; free to take what time she needed to follow this frail and unlikely clue; to go to Zakynthos, if she could prevail on Archie to take her; and to seek the child of whom the Dame de Doubtance had spoken.
She was glad to go. Glad, in spite of herself, to be spared the society of Marthe, and achingly glad to be plucked from the unhappy muddle between herself and her mother’s strange friend, Mr Crawford. Never again, she had said to herself over and over, as she sat shivering in the longboat beside Marthe, with the sea lapping round them, waiting for the corsair’s guns to start firing, and the signal which would mean their boat would be set rowing, escaping in the dark night to the Tunisian shore while the Dauphiné lay dwindling behind them. Never again, if she lived to escape from all this, would she force sympathy or arch female attentions on a man, whatever his seniority.
Steeling herself to meet Lymond again, for the formal farewells, she was surprised and also shamefully relieved when Onophrion hesitated, and then shook his head. ‘Mademoiselle, if you will permit, I think it better to send your leave-taking messages through me.’
‘Why?’ said Philippa. She liked Onophrion.
Onophrion coughed. ‘It is merely that … gentlemen under stress are sometimes under the necessity of taking certain steps … incompatible with the usages of polite female society.’
Philippa’s brown eyes shone with dawning intelligence. ‘Mr Crawford is drunk?’
‘I trust so, mademoiselle,’ said Onophrion.
The lamp had burned low in the captain’s cabin when Philippa passed, a moment or two later, and she did not care to stop and look in. Only she had an impression of broken glass, and a foetid aroma of malmsey, and of two hands, clasped outflung on the table, with a still head resting between them. It was the last memory of the Dauphiné she carried away with her: of that, and of a blow which numbed her arm to the shoulder. Oh, Christ, he had said. It’s the bloody wet-nurse again.
Philippa climbed down their rotten ladder and sat in their rotten caique and swallowed her tears all the way across to the ship of M. Leone Strozzi, Prior of Capua and Knight Hospitaller of the Order of St John.
Coming on deck a little time later, Marthe had none of Philippa’s compunction. She stopped in the captain’s doorway, and studied, smiling a little, the ruined table within, and the man lying stupefied in the shadows. In his turn, watching her from where he leaned, arms folded, against the dark panelling, Lymond spoke. ‘You wanted to see me?’
She covered her mistake like a veteran. For a moment the blue eyes widened and the clear brow ridged in something like a genuine alarm. Then, irony in her voice, Marthe said, ‘My congratulations. Rumour has lied.’
Following her gaze to the table: ‘Keep your congratulations, perhaps, for Mr Blyth,’ said Lymond dryly. ‘I am told you would prefer to remain on the Dauphiné and I regret that this is not possible. If you will kindly pack, the caique is leaving at midnight.’
‘The caique has left,’ said Marthe.
‘By whose orders?’
‘By mine. I told the Master,’ said Marthe, ‘that you had decided to send Miss Philippa and her entourage only. She’s half-way there now.’
‘M. Viénot!’ Soft though the call was, the captain answered immediately. ‘M. le Comte?’
‘From this moment, you accept no indirect orders from me without verifying them, and no orders at all from Mlle Marthe. Signal the Prior’s galley, and when the caique returns, see that Mlle Marthe and her luggage are placed in it. You might also ask Salablanca to remove M. Blyth to his cabin.’
‘You are proposing to use force?’ said Marthe. Her hair, combed out over her shoulders, lay on her bedgown outlined in silver from the deck lamps behind her: her voice expressed nothing but a kind of wary contempt.
‘I see no need. I mean to make landing on Malta,’ said Lymond. ‘It is a private matter, and as far as you and M. Gaultier are concerned the official embassy ends here. Your responsibility for the spinet is also therefore at an end, and since there is an element of danger, I see no point in exposing you needlessly. You will have, I hope, a safe and comfortable journey home.’
‘And my uncle?’ said Marthe.
‘Has expressed a preference to continue on board meanwhile. As far as he is concerned, you are your own mistress. As far as I am concerned, you are not.’
‘And if the spinet sinks to a watery grave,’ said Marthe, ‘who will recompense the King and the Sultan? Or have you providently amassed a second fortune for that?’
‘I am hoping it won’t immediately concern me,’ said Lymond. He gathered the door-curtain in his hand. ‘You have perhaps twenty minutes to pack.’ Then, as she stood unmoving, the mocking smile still on her lips, he said with the same weary courtesy, ‘Mademoiselle. There is nothing p
ersonal in this. If I could take you, believe me, I should. Since I have decided against it, you have really no rational alternative. I can have you tied and carried on board; you can threaten and even carry out suicide; you could possibly damage me or my men. These would be the petty exchanges of juveniles; and we are not juveniles.… Please pack quietly, and go.’
‘And your oath, on Gabriel’s altar in the Cathedral of St Giles?’ Marthe said in her pleasant, identical voice. ‘Was that a juvenile foolishness too?’
There was a long silence. The woollen door-curtain, released from Lymond’s hand, swung to across the cold doorway and he smoothed its folds, unseeing, with gentle fingers. Without turning, he said, ‘Very few people know of that.’
‘I am one of them,’ she said; and, watching his back, continued softly to speak. ‘Nor am I fool enough to believe that child is dead, whatever Mr Blyth tried to pretend. I know the truth now. Up to yesterday, your first duty was to the woman and boy. Now it is to the boy. If you reach any other decision, it is due to Gabriel’s strength and your own moral vapidity.’ And as he wheeled round, unamused, she spoke again, with deliberation, in the tongue so like his own.
‘What have you learned from life, that you cannot face facts? What happened in Algiers that is so paralysing that your mind cannot work through it? Shall I tell you?’ Between the strands of pale hair, the pale, clever face blazed into the blank face of the man.
‘Shall I tell you? By Gabriel’s orders, they took your lover, living or dead, and they flayed her. So that there might be none of her essence to bury, they flung what was left to the dogs. The skin they kept; and painted, and stuffed with wool, hair and straw, and set as in life, where you would be certain to find it.…
‘There is your picture. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge, too, that she was not the first to suffer it, and will not be the last. That she was ill, and did not want to survive. And that, from what you were told, it seems likely that she either died by her own hand or was killed before the flaying.
Pawn in Frankincense Page 14