Pawn in Frankincense (12 page)

Arab-style, hand on heart, Lymond also bowed, and, walking forward, bent to kiss the Governor’s hand. Jerott had no fear of his Arabic: it was a tongue they both knew. But to his surprise, Lymond answered in French. ‘From His Most Christian Majesty of France, greetings to Salah Rais, and felicitations on his new dignity. In token of which, and in recognition of the close friendship which lies between your Kingdom and that of France, my lord begs Salah Rais to accept some poor marks of fraternal regard.…’ The two-and-threepenny things, thought Jerott, despite himself entertained, and watched the box being opened.

The haul made an impression; as well it might, Jerott considered, watching the jewelled boxes, the chains, the belts and the bales of fine cloth begin to stack on the floor. So far so good. ‘And this?’ Lymond was saying, proffering something heavy, in metal.

‘Ah? What is this?’ said Salah Rais sharply; and as Jerott moved discreetly sideways to see, the Viceroy waved his hand to his chamberlain and, unfolding, moved down from the dais to take the object from Lymond himself.

It was a wheel-lock carbine, an exceptionally fine one, of a design Jerott had never before seen, and obviously quite new to Salah Rais. Experimental still in medium-range fighting in Europe, wheel-locks had hardly reached the western basin of the Mediterranean though the Sublime Porte, Jerott knew, had some matchlock weapons captured in Hungary. His lips tight, he watched Lymond hand the thing over, bright and beautifully made, saying, ‘It is loaded. If you will have matches brought, it may please you to fire it.’

Under the turban, the black eyes flickered. ‘Be it so,’ said Salah Rais and, clapping his hands, gave an order. A moment later, the carbine primed in his hands, he turned towards the French mission. ‘It comes from thy master, the friend of Algiers, so that the enemies of Algiers may be sent to perdition, as the lion stamps on its prey. He will rejoice with me when their sides fall down upon the ground and their souls depart from their bodies.’

He raised the short, heavy butt to his cheek and, smiling, took aim; and smiling, Lymond looked into the muzzle and bowed. ‘It is for that reason,’ he said, ‘that on my return to the harbour four more cases of carbines will be unloaded and presented to you with His Grace’s continuing esteem, together with ammunition to suit. Then may your enemies and his lie low indeed.’

There was a little pause. Lymond’s gaze met and held the black Egyptian eyes. ‘Even those carrion, the Knights of St John?’ said the Viceroy.

‘The Grand Master of the Knights of St John is not a Frenchman—yet,’ said Lymond. ‘The Most Christian King and the present Grand Master have severed relations. My esteemed companion, Mr Blyth, stands before you because he has retracted his vows, and I as an emissary of France to the Sultan Suleiman and a person favoured with Dragut Rais’s friendship. You may use these weapons where and upon whom you choose.’

Above the tracing of beard, the full lips puckered. ‘Thou art generous,’ said Salah Rais gravely, and fired.

Thundering back and forth in the bare, high-vaulted room, the sound crashed on the eardrums, drowning the sharp voices of shock and fear and surprise; and the smoke hung blue in the air, the wrung-out, acid smell of it coating the tongue. At Lymond’s feet, in a litter of smashed tiles and plaster, the King of France’s gemmed coffer lay, a tangled wreckage of gold foil, splinters and wire. ‘Now Allâh be my friend,’ said Salah Rais in surprise. ‘My brother the King of France has destroyed his own excellent gift, and it must now, alas, be replaced!’

In the deep, vermilion folds of Lymond’s cloak fragments of tile glittered, and a powder of gold dusted one thin kidskin shoe. Throughout, he had not moved. ‘The King of France presents his apologies for the inconvenient properties of his poor gift and will
feel himself honoured to replace the casket,’ said Lymond. And, looking down at his cloak, ‘I fear I present myself before Your Highness with an appearance of unseemly neglect. If you will permit me’—and drawing off his cloak, he dropped it, red and gold, among the unhinged jewels of the trophy—“I should let it lie here, with the rubbish.’

‘Fortune,’ said Salah Rais, ‘abounds with evil accidents. It would ill become a man of the true Faith to be less generous. One will replace the cloak with a better. Thou wilt dine with me. Then I shall give myself the honour of accompanying thee to the harbour.’

A new cloak had indeed been brought: Jerott wondered by what means its degree of relative magnificence had been signified. It fell weightily from Lymond’s shoulders: white tissue and ermine, the edge sewn with gold wire and emeralds. The sharp green clashed, nastily, with the red velvet doublet beneath. Dropping his hands from the clasp, Lymond said, ‘It pains me, but this is a pleasure I must defer until tomorrow. If the Viceroy will descend to the harbour at noon and accept the paltry hospitality of the
Dauphiné
, I shall be proud to break bread with him. Then, on his departure, the cases of arms may suitably be disembarked with his party. We are anxious to leave with the afternoon light.’

The Viceroy of Algiers, standing, made no obvious signal; but behind him, like a breath on the small hairs of his neck, Jerott felt the cold of drawn steel. ‘I regret,’ said that unbroken, suave Arabic. ‘Tomorrow is Friday, and among my people, no work may be done on that day. We must then beg to accept thy delightful bounty today.’

His breath held, Jerott looked at Lymond. Francis Crawford said gently, ‘But today I have set aside, from the most weighty necessity, for paying homage to your two respected associates. I must call on His Excellency the Agha of Janissaries, and on my lord Dragut Rais.’

It was then, for the first time, that Jerott realized that Salah Rais understood French. With one upraised palm he stopped his interpreter with the first words of this speech in his mouth, and said himself, smoothly, in Arabic, ‘Both these gentlemen, it is regretted, are absent from home. How desolate they will be. How afflicted, particularly my lord Dragut, who was extolling only last month the generosity of thyself to my people.’

Standing rigid with all his sweating companions at Lymond’s still back, Jerott was aware of a crashing headache and a mounting desire to cut loose and do something silly. They were supposed to be thoroughly briefed before they left on this expedition. Lymond had said nothing, damn him, about offering cases of guns to the heathen. Nor was it clear why Salah Rais, who a moment before had clearly held the whip hand, was suddenly apparently bargaining. And without a translator. Unless …

Unless, thought Jerott, suddenly, Salah Rais was in fact saying: I want those carbines. I want them now, and I don’t want the Agha to find out until it’s all over. And if you don’t tell the Agha I’ll offer you …

‘It so happens,’ said Salah Rais, ‘that I may be able to do thee some service. Thou hast offered a fortune, all Africa knows it, for the return of a certain woman and a certain one-year-old child. Many will come to thee with false tales in hopes of the money. Some of my own people have come to my gates with news, they claim, of the boy or the mother. While the cases are being unloaded, it may please thee to meet these people here, in a private room in my palace? Keep by thy side whom you wish. If thou hast need of any official of mine, however senior, to attend at the harbour, I shall arrange it.’

‘Indeed,’ said Lymond gently, ‘thou art a man born to great occasions. It shall be according to thy desires.’ He picked, Jerott noticed, the fat vizier for his personal hostage. To stay with him in the palace, he kept no one but Jerott himself.

They had to wait a few moments while their companions joined the men-at-arms in the yard and, mounted again, rode down to the harbour with Salah Rais’s escort to proffer Lymond’s written note to the
sous-patron
and have the carbines unloaded from the
Dauphiné’s
hold. Until that was complete, Jerott supposed, they would be under courteous guard. Salah Rais wanted those weapons. A man governed by a distant and powerful nation and at the mercy of its colonial army wanted all the surprises he could achieve, up his sleeve.

Of the ethics of that, this was not the place to inquire. Instead, Jerott said in English to the man waiting silently at his side, ‘I see. A policy of strict laissez-faire. When did you make it known you’d pay for news of Oonagh O’Dwyer and the child?’

‘A long time ago.’ Lymond was listening, his eyes fixed on the door.

‘Before we met you at Baden?’

‘Oh, God, yes.’ And seeing, perhaps, Jerott’s face, Lymond said, ‘I’m sorry. But it was, after all, my own business. And my own money.’

‘How much?’ And as Lymond did not reply, Jerott persisted. ‘How much? My God, it was my neck you were risking today.’

Lymond looked at him. ‘Did I ask you to come on this voyage? I can’t say I recall it.’

Jerott’s colour was high. ‘No, you didn’t, you bloody high-handed bastard. You might at least have cut your friends in for a share of the prize-money. How much is it?’

‘On the day I am brought face to face with the living child, or the living woman,’ said Lymond carefully, ‘my bankers at Lyons
will pay five hundred thousand ducats, in gold, to those who contrived that I found them.… You will wait here, please, for me.’ A robed figure, silently arrived in the doorway, bowed and beckoned.

Lymond was turning to go when Jerott, abruptly, put out a hand. ‘Did you say what I think you said? You have a fortune this size? And you have offered it all?’

‘It is all I do have,’ said Lymond. ‘And pride is expensive to buy. As Gabriel knows.’

Francis Crawford was away for two hours. He interviewed fifteen human beings in the small room where Salah Rais, with Egyptian irony, had summoned all who claimed Lymond’s reward, in the hope of placing the Special Envoy of France conveniently in Salah Rais’s debt.

The Viceroy’s requital, come so patly to hand, was the speedy delivery of the carbines, even now loading on the quay under the no doubt amazed eyes of the women, and Onophrion and Archie. In exchange for it Francis Crawford received nothing; for none of the fifteen he interviewed possessed the information which he sought.

To Jerott, on his return, Lymond said simply, ‘None of them. Shall we go?’

‘Are you sure?’ It was a stupid question. Lymond merely said, ‘They didn’t go away empty-handed. I have sent my respectful leave-takings to the Governor: let not a whelp go unsaluted.… Let’s go back to the ship.’

‘You’re leaving Algiers?’

‘What else? Dragut Rais isn’t here. We’ll give the Viceroy his feast early tomorrow, and sail.’

‘Will he come?’ said Jerott. ‘Now he has his beautiful carbines?’

‘He’ll come,’ said Lymond briefly. ‘When he notices I haven’t included the bullets.’

And that smart and equivocal transaction and its useless corollary might have been the end of the incident at Algiers.

Except that before Jerott, with Lymond, left the palace, a man found them: a thickset man whose coarse shirt hung on powerful shoulders, and who wore a round felt cap on his forceful black curls. He spoke in Arabic. ‘The Envoy from the French ship?’

Lymond stopped. ‘I lead the gentlemen on the French ship
Dauphiné
, yes. Your name?’

The felt cap moved, once. ‘It is of no matter. But thou, thou art the prince who offers gold to find a child and a woman?’

‘Yes. You have information?’ said Lymond.

‘I have more,’ said the man. Beyond an avenue of slim pillars they had lit the lamps in the courtyard: against the chevrons of flickering light his face was impassive and blank. ‘I have written word from the woman herself. What dost thou pay?’

‘This,’ said Lymond, and held out the ruby he slipped from his finger. ‘And all I promise if I meet her or the child, alive, as a result.’

A moment later, he held the note in his hands.

Once, long ago in Graham Malett’s white house on Malta, Lymond had received from Jerott’s contemptuous hands a letter written by Oonagh O’Dwyer.
Do not come
, had said the black, vigorous script.
I do not wish to see you
.

The writing, unchanged, was still irrefutably hers. But the message this time was different. Addressed to Lymond in his full and correct name and dated the previous day—the day, thought Jerott, when, lying outwith the harbour, they had sent news of their coming to the Viceroy—it said:
The day set for our meeting is coming. I am glad, for I have been very tired.… These are poor people to whom gold is small use: do not overwhelm them.… Forget the child ever lived. It has been sold, they told me; but it may be a lie: it failed a lot, they said, after the branding. I do not want you to have him. Your life has been wasted enough
.… And, after a space, and written differently, as if on an impulse:
I regret nothing save for that fool of a man. And anyway, what good do regrets do?