The Disorderly Knights (2 page)

As with the two previous books in this series,
The Disorderly Knights
is based on fact. The attacks on Malta, Gozo and Tripoli took place in 1551 broadly as related, including the perfidy of the Grand Master, the trick by which Mdina was saved, the weakness of the Governor of Gozo, and the attempt by the Calabrian recruits to blow up the citadel of Tripoli, together with the part played by the French Ambassador in saving the garrison.

In the last part of the book, the feud between the Scotts and the Kerrs and its climax is authentic also, as was the betrayal of Paris by Cormac O’Connor. The rest is conjecture.

LEADING CHARACTERS

All of the following are recorded in history save for the characters distinguished by an asterisk
.

Members of the Noble Order of Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta
:

JUAN DE HOMEDÈS, Grand Master of the Order, 1536–53

NICHOLAS DURAND DE VILLEGAGNON, Knight of the Order

*GRAHAM REID MALETT, (Gabriel) Grand Cross of Grace and Hon. Bailiff of the Order

LEONE STROZZI, Prior of Capua and Commander of the King of France’s Mediterranean fleet

FRANCIS OF LORRAINE, Grand Prior in France of the Order, and brother of the Scottish Queen Dowager

*JEROTT BLYTH, of Scotland and Nantes, Knight of the Order

GALATIAN DE CÉSEL, Knight of the Order and Governor of Gozo

NICHOLAS UPTON, Turcopilier or Officer of the English Tongue within the Order

SERVING BROTHER DES ROCHES, of the Châtelet, Tripoli

MICHEL DE SEURRE, Sieur de Lumigny, Knight of the Order

BAILIFF GEORGE ADORNE, Knight of the Order and Governor of Mdina

MARSHAL GASPARD DE VALLIER, Knight of the Order and Governor of Tripoli

SIR JAMES SANDILANDS OF CALDER, Preceptor-General of the House of Torphichen of the Order in Scotland

Other French, or in the French Service
:

ANNE DE MONTMORENCY, Marshal, Grand Master and Constable of France

PIERO STROZZI, Seigneur de Belleville, Count de Languillara, Florentine colonel of infantry under the King of France and brother of Leone Strozzi

GABRIEL DE LUETZ, Baron et Seigneur d’Aramon et de Valabrègues, French Ambassador to Turkey

HENRI CLEUTIN, Seigneur d’Oisel et de Villeparisis, French Ambassador and Lieutenant-General to the King of France in Scotland

NICOLAS DE NICOLAY, Sieur d’Arfeville et de Bel Air, cosmographer to the King of France

Irish
:

CORMAC O’CONNOR, heir to Brian Faly O’Connor, rebel Irish chieftain against England

*OONAGH O’DWYER, his former mistress

GEORGE PARIS, an agent between Ireland and France

Scots, or Closely Connected with the Scots
:

*FRANCIS CRAWFORD OF LYMOND, Comte de Sevigny

*RICHARD CRAWFORD, third Baron Culter, his brother

*SYBILLA, the Dowager Lady Culter, his mother

*MARIOTTA, Richard’s Irish-born wife

*KEVIN CRAWFORD, Master of Culter, Richard’s infant son

SIR WALTER SCOTT OF BUCCLEUCH, Warden of the Middle Marches and Justiciar of Liddesdale

SIR WILLIAM SCOTT OF KINCURD, Younger of Buccleuch, his heir

JANET BEATON, Lady of Buccleuch, his wife

GRIZEL BEATON, Lady (Younger) of Buccleuch, sister to Janet Beaton and wife to Will Scott

ROBERT BEATON OF CREICH, Captain of Falkland, their brother

MARY OF GUISE, Queen Mother of Scotland, and mother of the child Mary, Queen of Scots

SIR PETER CRANSTON OF CRANSTONE Border landowner, neighbour of the Kerrs and the Scotts

*JOLETA REID MALETT, sister to Sir Graham Reid Malett

*EVANGELISTA DONATI OF VENICE, Joleta’s governess and duenna

SIR THOMAS ERSKINE, Master of Erskine, Chief Scots Privy Councillor and Special Ambassador

MARGARET ERSKINE,
née
Fleming, his wife

JENNY, LADY FLEMING, mother to Margaret Erskine, and former mistress to the King of France

JOHN THOMPSON, (Jockie, Tamsín) sea rover

HOUGH ISA, a friendly lady open to barter

English
:

*KATE SOMERVILLE, mistress of Flaw Valleys

*PHILIPPA, her daughter

*CHEESE-WAME HENDERSON, their servant

Turks, or in Turkish Pay
:

DRAGUT RAIS, Anatolian corsair in Turkish service

SAL AH RAIS, corsair in Turkish service and joint lieutenant with Dragut

SINAN PASHA OF SMYRNA, General in command of Sultan Suleiman’s expedition

THE AGA MORAT, Lord of Tagiura and ally of the Sultan Suleiman

*SALABLANCA, a Moor from Spain enslaved by the Knights

*GÜZEL, companion to Dragut Rais

*KEDI, a nurse

Heralds
:

WILLIAM FLOWER, Chester Herald (England)

ADAM MACCULLO, Bute Herald (Scotland)

ROBBIE FORMAN, Ross Herald (Scotland)

Part One
THE SALTIRE AND
SUPPORTERS

  I:
Mother’s Baking
(Catslack, October 1548)

 II:
Hough Isa
(Crailing, May 1549)

III:
Joleta
(Flaw Valleys, May 1551)

I
M
other’s
B
aking

(
Catslack, October 1548
)

O
N
the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.

News of the English attack came towards the end of the ceremony when, by good fortune, young Scott and his aunt Grizel were by all accounts man and wife. There was no bother over priorities. As the congregation hustled out of the church, led by bridegroom and father, and spurred off on the heels of the messenger, the new-made bride and her sister watched them go.

‘I’m daft,’ said Grizel Beaton to Janet Beaton, straightening her headdress where her bridegroom’s helmet had knocked it cockeyed. ‘And after five years of it with Will’s father, you should think shame to allow your own sister to marry a Scott. I’ve wed his two empty boots.’

‘That you havena,’ said Janet, Lady of Buccleuch, lowering her voice not at all in the presence of two hundred twittering Scott relations as they gazed after their vanishing husbands. ‘They aye remember their boots. It’s their empty nightgowns that get fair monotonous.’

Being a Beaton, Will Scott’s new wife was riled, but by no means overcome. The war between England and Scotland was in its eighth year and there had been no raid for ten days: it had seemed possible to get married in peace. Creich, her home, was too far away. So Grizel Beaton had chosen to marry at Melrose, with the tarred canvas among the roof beams patching the holes from the last English raid, and the pillars chipped with arquebus shot.

Duly packed like broccoli into lawn, buckram and plush and ropes of misshapen pearls, she had enjoyed the wedding, and even the cautious clash of plate armour underwriting the hymns. Lord Grey of Wilton with an English army was occupying Roxburgh only twelve miles away, and had twice emerged to plunder and burn the district since October began. If the wedding was wanted at Melrose—and Buccleuch, as Hereditary Bailie of the Abbey lands, had fewer objections than usual to any idea not his own—then the congregation had to come armed, that was all. The Scotts and their allies,
the twenty polite Frenchmen from Edinburgh, the Italian commander with the lame leg, had left their men at arms outside with their horses, the plumed helmets lashed to the saddlebows; and if there were a few vacant seats where a man from Hawick or Bedrule had ducked too late ten days before, no one mentioned it.

For a while, standing next to her jingling bridegroom, her gaze averted from his carroty hair, Grizel had thought the other absentees had escaped his attention. Then, as alto and counter-tenor rang from pillar to pillar, the red head on one side of her leaned towards the unkempt grey one on the other and hissed, ‘Da! Where are the Crawfords?’

And Buccleuch, the bride saw out of the tail of her eye, sank his head into his shoulders like a bear in its ruff, and said nothing. For by ‘the Crawfords’, Sir William Scott meant not Lord Culter and his wife Mariotta, or even Sybilla, their remarkable mother; but the only man in Scotland Will Scott had ever obeyed without arguing: Francis Crawford of Lymond.

And it was then, as the Bishop bored on through the pages of print which were making these two man and wife, that the Abbey’s chipped door-leaf moved and a man entered, in the blue and silver livery of Crawford, to speak quietly to one of the monks. From bent head to devout head, the word travelled. Lord Grey of England, guided by a Scotsman, renegade chief of the Kerrs, had burned Buccleuch’s town of Selkirk to the ground, despoiled his castle of Newark, and was advancing, destroying and killing along the River Yarrow, through the trim possessions of the Scotts and their friends.

The wedding ended, hurriedly, on a surge of masculine
bonhomie
and relief. Five minutes later, followed by the red-eyed glares of their womenfolk, Buccleuch and his friends and his new-married son had plunged off to join Lord Culter, head of the Crawfords, and Francis Crawford his brother, to fight the English once more.

*

Sentimentally, Will Scott thought, it made his wedding-day perfect. Cantering, easy and big-limbed, through the bracken of Ettrick-side, with leaves stuck, lime-green and scarlet on his wet sleeves, blue eyes narrowed and fair, red-blooded Scott face misted with rain, he was borne on a vast, angry joy.

The lands of Branxholm and Hawick and all Buccleuch possessed in these regions had been a favourite target while King Henry VIII of England and his successor had tried to resurrect their overlordship of Scotland and seize and marry Mary, the child Queen of Scotland, to Henry’s son Edward, now the young English King.

They had failed, despite the great English victory at Pinkie, and
timber and thatch had risen in Buccleuch’s lands again, and the thick stone towers—his father’s at Buccleuch and Branxholm, his own at Kincurd, his grandmother’s at Catslack—still survived. After Pinkie, the English army had retired, leaving their garrisons to police the outraged land; and Sir William Scott had left Branxholm to join the roving force then commanded by Crawford of Lymond.