Pawn in Frankincense

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Faced with ten days in the Lazaretto, Philippa longed to march outside and grapple with the strangeness of it all, exercising whatever sophistication she had acquired in these months of untoward travelling and the despised talent which was the only one she had ever been credited with: a gift for plain common sense.

  Not that life in quarantine was humdrum. Sitting in the courtyard between Archie Abernethy and the wee man with the parrot, she was able to watch the Aïssqoua dervish in meditation, interrupted by brief performances of frenzy twice daily, when he rolled on sword-edges, kissed snakes, chewed glass and clutched red-hot iron bars. Philippa heated them for him, when the guardian’s wife refused to come in because of the snakes, and inspected his blister-free palms admiringly afterwards while he and Archie held a long foreign conversation which had to do, Archie said, with transcendental meditation. The little man with the parrot, who had come off a ship just in from Syria, sat for a while allowing the Arabic to flow over his head, and then leaning towards Philippa said, ‘Are youse English?’

  In public, Archie was an Indian animal-trainer and Philippa was, as the fancy took her, niece, wife, daughter or assistant, of nameless origin. Since they always ended up speaking English to one another, it was not a deception they were able to keep up for very long, and in the Lazaretto, Philippa supposed, it hardly mattered. In any case, she was all too familiar with the cadences of that inquiry. ‘I’m English,’ said Philippa. ‘And my friend is Scots, but he prefers to use his Indian name for his menagerie work. And you don’t need to tell me what you are.’

  The man with the parrot, who was a very little man with a triangular grin and a black bonnet with two dangling earflaps, said frothily, ‘No, I ken. I’m Sheemy Wurmit frae Paisley. Trader. And that’s Netta. She’s no weel.’

  Philippa gazed at the parrot, and the parrot rasped Sheemy Wurmit’s arm with one gnarled grey claw and stared blearily back. It was moulting. ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘Archie, this is Sheemy Wurmit, and his parrot’s no weel.’

  Philippa, who had never before had the experience of introducing two Scotsmen to each other, found to her relief that they got on rather well. Sheemy, indeed, viewed Abernethy’s dark, turbaned face with a certain reverent awe. ‘Ye’ll hae seen a Rhynocerots then,’ he said. ‘Oo: a right gruesome beast, yon. And yon great humphy-backit deils wi’ the long grisselly snouts hanging down twixt their teeth. That’s an awful sieht, yon.’

  ‘Elephants,’ said Archie.

  ‘Whatever ye call them. And Ziraphs. Hae ye seen a ziraph? All speckly reid and white neck, wi’ a camel-heid on the tap that could lick the roof off a ten-storey tenement. Yon’s a disgrace against Nature. I seen one cut up back there outside Cairo, for why I’d not care to guess, gin ye needed a speckly stair-runner.’

  ‘Cut up?’ said Archie quickly. ‘D’you mean dissected?’

  ‘I mean cut up,’ said Sheemy Wurmit. ‘By a fellow called Giles.’

  ‘Peter Giles?’

  ‘I dunno. Giles. He was on his way to Aleppo to get another beast there. He makes drawings of their insides. He’d done it before, with one o’ yon humphy-backit …’

  Philippa, watching Archie’s reminiscent black eyes, remembered suddenly who this must be. Archie’s hero, Pierre Gilles of Albi, scholar and zoologist, who for years had toured the Levant on commission from the monarchs of France, finding and buying precious manuscripts for the French royal libraries, and sending home unique animals for the French royal menageries. Archie knew and revered Pierre Gilles of old; and for a moment Philippa wondered if the pull was strong enough to divert him to Aleppo, and away from his search for the child. But although he asked one or two questions, Abernethy soon dropped the subject when it became clear that the other man had no other information; and taking Netta instead, began to examine the parrot.

  Later, as the parrot’s treatment progressed and they met, day after day, in the courtyard in company with the dervish lying peacefully on his swords and the Sicilian merchant muttering over his papers, Philippa learned that few people knew their Europe better than Sheemy. As terdji-man, or interpreter to traders, and dabbling in the barter line sometimes himself, he crossed and recrossed the seas. Just now, he had stepped off a boat bound for Venice with a cargo of Tripoli ash for glass-making: ‘Man, that’d gie ye a hoast,’ said Sheemy. ‘Rubric from Aden: that’s another hell o’ a cargo. Ae spatter o’ rain, and your hinter end’s reid as twa cherries.’

  ‘What’s the cargo you like best to carry?’ said Philippa.

  ‘Wine,’ said Sheemy fondly. ‘Now there’s good living for you. A wee hole through the bung and a good stout reed in your jaws, and ye can sook like a lord till you’re paralysed. I’ve had it that far down the barrel I’ve had to join three reeds together and I took a week to get over the crick in my neck.’ He rubbed it, remembering, and scratched. ‘I dinna ken if it’s the ash or the lice, but I could fairly caper with itches.’

  ‘You’ve got spots,’ said Philippa, viewing him critically. ‘I expect it’s the garlic.’

  The triangular mouth funnelled like an exhaling cod. ‘Christ,’ said Sheemy Wurmit, and after a quick squint down his shirt, to her surprise, he shot into his chamber, undoing his strings as he went. A moment later the Sicilian, who had been listening unashamedly, followed him, his face white where it wasn’t powdered lightly with pimples. A great deal of shouting followed, in which the guardian and his wife took a full share; and a small crowd began to gather, like magic, outside the walls. The dervish, scratching abstractedly, looked up from the board full of nails he was lying on, and spoke to Archie Abernethy, who was pitching dice all to himself in the dust. Archie said, ‘I expect they think it’s the pox.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Philippa firmly. ‘My goodness, as if I hadn’t seen spots just like that all over the stable-boy just before I came away. It’s chicken-pox; that’s what it is; and I’ve had it, and we’re due out on Thursday.’

  ‘It’s chicken-pox,’ agreed Archie. ‘And you’ve had it, but we’re not due out on Thursday. Instead, we’ve just got ourselves another forty days’ quarantine.’

  The dervish proved a very bad patient and they had to tie mittens on him to stop him from scratching the scabs. ‘You’ll be marked for life, Haji Ishak,’ said Philippa sharply. Her Arabic was becoming much better under Archie’s tuition, and Sheemy gave her two hours of Turkish a day. It was at the end of one of these that he showed her his pearls.

  Philippa had wondered, but had not asked, why the little dragoman had left ship at Zakynthos. Now, looking at the lustre and size of the heaped pearls in paper-thin kid which he untied and set down before her, she didn’t ask if they were bought or smuggled or stolen, but smiled and admired them until he put one in her hand and told her to keep it. ‘Another o’ Nature’s marvels,’ said Sheemy, brushing aside her alarmed thanks. ‘A fellow told me. On the twenty-fourth of the month this dew comes down on the water and it’s collected, wrapped, and flung into the sea; and then at the right time these other fellows get let down on ropes to the sea-bed and bring it all up.’

  ‘The dew?’ said Philippa. ‘In bags or boxes?’

  ‘In buckets,’ said Sheemy, oblivious. ‘Or nets. Y’see, it’s all changed into these wee creepy worms in hard jeckets.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Philippa. ‘And then what do they do?’

  ‘Take their jeckets off,’ explained Sheemy. ‘And there’s the stones in their pooches.’

  ‘What stones?’

  ‘They stones. The pearls. These. That’s where they come from.’

  ‘It is one of Nature’s marvels, isn’t it?’ said Philippa. ‘And now what will you do with them?’

  ‘Sell them,’ said Sheemy, smiling a fond, triangular smile. ‘There’s a Venetian laddie here that Signor Manoli buys his currants from: ye’ll have seen him, maybe, passing in bills of lading and chatting outside the window. He’s no let in, and I canna pass the stones out, but he’s crazy to have them. Come the end o’ this damned
quarantine and I’ll be up to the House o’ the Palm Tree like the wind.’

  ‘The what?’ said Philippa.

  ‘The House of the Palm Tree. Where this merchant Donati does business.’

  ‘Donati,’ repeated Philippa. She didn’t look at Archie. She didn’t, in fact, focus on anybody but bent all her powers of mental digestion on this pair of facts. The House of the Palm Tree, Zakynthos, was where she had been sent by the Dame de Doubtance in Lyons to find the lost child Khaireddin. And Donati, Evangelista Donati, was the name of the Venetian woman whom Sir Graham Malett had chosen to chaperone his sister in Scotland in the last months of her life.

  It might have been coincidence, but it was unlikely, thought Philippa shakily. The Donatis were creatures of Gabriel. In the end, blaming Gabriel for the death of his sister, Evangelista had turned against her employer, and after Gabriel’s flight Madame Donati had also left Scotland to return home, one took it, to Venice.

  But Evangelista Donati was a woman, and had been attached to the girl. The rest of the family—this merchant Sheemy spoke of (a brother? a cousin?) who exported currants in Zakynthos—might have no cause to quarrel with Gabriel. Philippa knew how strong and how lucrative was the spell Graham Reid Malett could cast. She said, without giving herself time to regret it, ‘Sheemy. I’ve a story to tell you.’

  Afterwards, Archie said she was soft in the head, and she knew she had taken a risk. But there was something about Sheemy Wurmit she was ready to trust; and in any case, she was revealing no secrets. She told him about Sir Graham Reid Malett, Knight of Grace of the Order of St John who had returned to Malta after failing in his plans to control Scotland. And she told how he was taking his revenge on the man responsible for that failure by concealing a child; and how, by threatening the child’s life, he was also preserving his own.

  Sheemy’s eyes became unglazed. ‘Here, I heard of that!’ he said. ‘The coast’s fairly agog over some Frenchman offering a ransom in gold for a wean. But he’s not a Frenchman?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa patiently. ‘His name’s Francis Crawford of Lymond. The family come from Midculter.’

  ‘Oh, them,’ said the Paisley man slowly. ‘I kent the grandfather, the first o’ the barons. So this is the heir?’

  ‘No, it’s the third baron’s brother,’ said Philippa, who since her several visits to Scotland had become notably brisk at genealogy. ‘Richard, the present Lord Culter, has a little son of his own who’ll succeed him.’

  ‘Oh, I mind fine,’ said Sheemy. ‘He married late, did he not? And until he got the boy, this brother Francis you speak of was the heir? And wait you a bitty: wasn’t that younger brother outlawed? Now I see it. A wild one, and out for the title. If I were your baron Richard I’d watch out for my son. Men’ve been known to kill their nephews before now, and put their sons in their shoes. Nae wonder he wants his own laddie found.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve been reading,’ said Philippa. ‘But you’ll never go through life with your head stuffed full of nonsense like that. They may go on like that in Tripoli, but you can take it from me that Mr Crawford would never dream of harming his brother or nephew even if he could put his own son in their place, which he couldn’t, as the poor thing isn’t even legitimate. No one,’ said Philippa, blotched unbecomingly with temper, ‘seems to be able to credit that a father should care what becomes of his son.’

  A breath of embarrassment, in passing, kissed the gummy, triangular grin. ‘Oh, I wouldna say if they came to your notice you wouldna gie them a dandle,’ said Sheemy. ‘But after all, who’s tae ken where they are, or which is yours or another’s? A wean’s a wean: wet at baith ends and no very smert in the middle.… All right,’ he said hastily, as Philippa opened her mouth. ‘All right. Your friend’s a right big-hearted Da. But are ye sure he doesn’t just want the bairn so that he can kill Sir Graham Reid Malett?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ said Philippa. ‘So long as someone gets that poor child out of Gabriel’s control and back to where he belongs?’

  There was a short silence. ‘It was awful wet in Paisley,’ said Sheemy. ‘But maybe you’re right. Anyway, ye can aye count on Sheemy. Sheemy’s the one for a rammy. We’ll go to the House of the Palm Tree together.’

  It was a while before they got there, as Sheemy’s parrot died in the morning, and three days after that Haji Ishak went down with the mumps. His suffering, reported Philippa, was terrible to see, and she cuffed Archie, who was sitting in the yard among the glass and the cold iron bars, laughing hysterically. Forty days later, they were given their signed sedes and let out of quarantine, their clothes stinking of brimstone. The dervish disappeared. The Sicilian went off to the harbour. And Sheemy Wurmit, Abernethy and Philippa made for the House of the Palm Tree, Zakynthos, at last.

  The long, narrow street between the west side of the harbour and the foot of the hill was unpaved, and the House of the Palm Tree nearly a mile along its length. Trotting, in her down-at-heel shoes, to keep up with the two men, Philippa fell over her feet, clutching her cloak as her eyes spun in her head, registering the throng of pushing humans and animals, the figures robed, furred, brocaded, naked, the heads bare, turbaned, veiled and capped in every size and colour of headgear, the skins of every mutation from umber to russet. Donkeys tripped past, pregnant with impossible loads; caparisoned mules with a Greek woman, earringed and décolletée, sitting astride, or a Venetian, sidesaddle, with a high silk collar and cloak, her chains jangling.

  Down towards the harbour, where she counted the masts of twenty ships and the banners of eight nations, crawled the heavier traffic: the hand-drawn barrows, the bullock-carts, the hogsheads of oil and wine labouring in procession on sweating dark backs. Children danced in and out; dogs, in a rolling of bristle, pressed against her creased skirts; there was a strong smell of goat.

  There was a smell of incense: from a low, plastered building came a dim gleam of candlesticks and the familiar harping of Latin: it was an Italian church, with a Greek chapel next door. Every seventh or eighth house, she thought, had been a warehouse or a Greek Orthodox church: Mammon and God, as usual, went hand in hand. Archie said, ‘What will you say to him?’

  ‘What?’ said Philippa; and then, shaking herself, gave Abernethy her full attention. For weeks, she had considered this whole interview, bearing in mind the singularly few confirmed facts which had brought her. When Dragut Rais left Algiers for the winter, Jerott had said, the children were mostly sold off. The baby Khaireddin had been going overseas, but had died on the way.

  It might be true. It might be false, but Jerott might believe it to be true. And, Philippa had already concluded, with an unsentimental logic which would have shattered the Chevalier Blyth, it might be false and Jerott might jolly well know it. Two chances out of three said that the little boy was alive. And reinforcing these two was the Dame de Doubtance’s firm belief that she, Philippa, would have news of the child here in Zakynthos.

  There had been authority in that prediction. There was also, for Philippa’s money, a strong suggestion of mischief. If this Venetian merchant of the House of the Palm Tree was indeed related to Evangelista Donati who had cared for Gabriel’s young sister, then the child had been sent there for hiding by Gabriel and she, Philippa, had only to mention Lymond’s name to be splat like a pike.

  On the other hand, Signorina Donati had ended by turning against Gabriel, and might be willing to help, even if her relative were not. Philippa had not been able to find out whether there were any womenfolk in Marino Donati’s household, but she was going to. She said to Archie, ‘I don’t think we should mention Mr Crawford at all. We’ve come to sell Sheemy’s pearls, and I’m there to persuade the Donati ladies to buy them. Leave the rest all to me. You know. O boo de la thing.’

  ‘What?’ said Archie, in his turn.

  ‘You know. The thing they say about camels. At the end of the trau …’

  ‘You mean the thing Mr Crawford says,’ said Archie with ungenerous malice. ‘Au bout
de la trace on trouve toujours ou le chameau ou le propriétaire du chameau.’

  ‘That’s it!’ said Philippa. ‘That’s it exactly. Only of course,’ she said cheerfully, ‘Mr Crawford says it in French.’

  The first thing that was immediately plain about Marino Donati was that he was unmarried, and that this was not in any way a surprise. A big, stocky man with indigo jowls and a soapy brown dome blotched with pigment, he wore an embroidered silk robe, certainly not for comfort, over his sweaty, creased tunic, and an intaglio-cut ruby fastened his belt.

  He showed no interest in the black pearl Sheemy offered him: rolled it irritably to and fro on his thick palm while referring, trenchantly, to the bad state of trade; and when Archie, unruffled, in passable Italian pointed out the ladies’ pleasure in trinkets, Signor Donati answered, shortly, that there were no women in his house but kitchenmaids, and he wouldn’t have those if the footmen could be induced to stay on without. Sheemy, genteel but casual, held out his hand for the black pearl, received it, and, untying a quantity of thin chamois, laid it prosaically among the three or four score perfect pearls thus revealed and began carefully to retie them.

  Marino Donati let him actually put them away in his pouch before he said, with equal detachment, ‘I wouldn’t touch them myself, with the demand for coloured jewels this year. But if you have a few top quality matched pearls, I might know of a buyer. He would expect some concessions on price.’

  ‘Would he?’ said Sheemy. ‘Ah, he’s a man after my own heart. But what’s to be done; and the worms that proud that it takes a shower of golden zecchinis to open one little sneck? An oyster’s a hard man to cross.’

  ‘A Venetian,’ said Signor Donati bluntly, ‘is also strongly resistant to force. I am conversant with current prices.’