The Disorderly Knights (52 page)

He was mounted. Will Scott reached up a hand, smiling. ‘If you are patrolling the Borders for the English, I may meet you one of these darker nights.’

‘For both sides, not only the English. We are the Wardens’ mailed fist, to be rushed in where there’s trouble.’

‘And if there’s no trouble, you’ll make it,’ offered Will Scott, his eyes bright, his cheeks red.

‘No. At the moment,’ affirmed Lymond grimly, ‘I am having truck with nothing less than total calamity.’

VII
T
he
L
usty
M
ay

(
Dumbarton, April/May 1552
)

F
AT
, perfected, and longing to bloody their weapons, the company at St Mary’s obeyed with reluctance Lymond’s decree that the spring and summer of their first flowering should be devoted to Scotland.

Some, like Gabriel, Guthrie and Bell, agreed that the work he proposed, the safeguarding, policing, shepherding, the patrolling of the Debatable Land, the thieves’ waste between England and Scotland, was worth while in itself. All of them came to see, in the end, that the series of small, difficult actions into which he plunged them were satisfying, gave them confidence in each other, and were quickly hardening them into a team.

They did not, apparently, have any pressing need for an income, which was as well, for any payment they received was so far nominal. Their personal well-being continued to be guaranteed by Lymond, and this satisfied, it appeared, all his officers; although the mercenaries demanded—and received—promises of rich rewards for fighting on the Continent when the summer was over. Meanwhile, Jerott supposed, he and his fellow knights were living in part at least on the money Lymond had received from the Constable of France, and were doing work which might well have fallen to the King of France’s garrisons in Scotland except that that unfortunate four hundred, had they attempted it, would have been sniped at by the united Borders as busybodies from an alien shore.

As it was, the Borders had a reluctant admiration for St Mary’s, who had meted out tough help and tough justice that winter. Many an independent family, like the Scotts and the Kerrs, were hoping to pursue their own unlawful pleasures unnoticed and gave a guarded reception to the round of cool visits Lymond made that spring. He called, too, on Lord Wharton at Carlisle, and on the English Deputy Wardens who, with their Scottish counterparts, tried to keep order, stop thieving and exchanged miscreants between the nations.

Roads were drying out and Border cattle were fattening on the spring grass. With St Mary’s help, they would calve where they ate.
The Armstrongs, the Grahams, the Elliots and all the broken men and freebooters of the Debatable Land might wriggle like eels in an ark to escape the attention of this forbidding new force, but as April began to grow towards May they began one by one to find themselves, to their own disgusted surprise, behind bars at Edinburgh or Carlisle, and with no prospect of a blood feud to recompense them when and if they became free. It looked nastily as if some of the fun was to go out of life, henceforth to be devoted to nothing more lively than raising sons, livestock and barley; and even the Trodds were to be policed.

Under this pleasant arrangement, the owners of stolen cattle were allowed to cross the Border not later than six days after the robbery to find them. If the loser failed, the stolen cattle belonged to the reiver. The hunt was therefore a feverish one: feelings ran high and heads rolled, leaving an uncertain judicial situation on both sides. A party engaged on a Hot Trodd, it was decreed, must notify St Mary’s before departing. And in case it escaped their minds, Lymond had his independent observers from end to end of the Debatable Ground. He might be half a day behind the excited party, but the knowledge that he
was
behind was likely to cast a little restraint.

He visited, also, the few powerful landowners supporting the Crown in the south-west, and made sure that the Earl of Cassillis, Lord Maxwell and Sir James Drumlanrig knew exactly what he was doing. This meant long hours of riding, a brief call, and a quick return to St Mary’s to control developing affairs, but it was done efficiently and without fuss, usually with no more than two officers and a score of men at his back. It was when Lymond was returning from one of these fast, scattered tours with something like nine hours in the saddle behind him, that he was greeted at St Mary’s with the news that Thompson had been for two days at Dumbarton and must see him before leaving next day.

Thompson, that well-known sea robber, had been recruited, Jerott knew, to instruct in saltwater warfare that summer. It seemed to him, and he found to Gabriel also, that the business could wait. But Lymond, stopping only to change horses and issue brief directions, simply continued his journey to Dumbarton, a matter of eighty-five miles and a full day of hilly travelling.

Tait and Bell had been with him to Carlisle. Lymond left them at St Mary’s and chose Adam Blacklock and Jerott to continue, to Jerott’s disgust. And the tolerant counsel of Gabriel, to whom Brother Blyth had described with contempt Lymond’s conduct at Dumbarton once before, reduced that young knight to impotent silence. All right: how would Sir Graham prise Francis Crawford from his bedfellows?

But once they left St Mary’s, there was so much of moment to
discuss and to plan that Jerott lost sight of his grievance, and even Adam Blacklock abandoned his stutter. They stopped at Midculter to pick up Lymond’s brother, who wanted to discuss a cargo with Thompson, but to Jerott’s profound relief saw no sign of Sybilla or Gabriel’s sister Joleta.

By late evening they got to Dumbarton, and dismounted at the
Governor’s Barque
, where the candles shone in the unshuttered casements of the inn’s single hired parlour, to show that Thompson had come, and was waiting.

In eight years, Scottish pirates had taken a total of something like two million crowns in gold out of Flemish shipping alone. Jockie Thompson, who had a number of other imaginative sidelines besides, believed in making the most of his brief visits to land. Instead of his old leather jacket and stained, salt-rotted breech-hose, he was hung like a hoy with a six-pound furred gown, as Lymond noted aloud, and the gold chains like futtock shrouds on his chest. The black beard and the tough brosy face glistened with fat as he swallowed ox tongues swilled down with Bordeaux and groused about the lightage fees at Dover these days and the customars who, far from taking a gentleman’s word, would drive an iron rod through your bales to see if you had hidden hackbuts.

‘And had you?’ said Lord Culter cheerfully. Relaxed, well-fed round their private table under the flickering tapers, they had disposed before the meal was half over with his personal business and, he guessed, were only waiting for his tactful withdrawal later on to complete whatever transaction Lymond and Thompson were entertaining. It was, he knew, a matter of arranging for Thompson to take the St Mary’s officers, in groups, for sea training that summer. It did not need much imagination to guess that what they would practise was piracy, nor that what Lymond was here at the moment to receive was contraband stores, to keep Thompson sweet.

Richard Crawford watched his younger brother, who had spent the better part of a day and a night in the saddle without turning a hair, handle this explosive brute of a seaman like an artist while Blacklock, his stiff leg stretched under the table, looked on smiling and the other fellow, the handsome, smouldering knight Francis dragged with him everywhere, was despite himself drawn into the game.

‘Was I smuggling hackbuts?’ said Thompson now, moving the red wine aside and taking up the aqua-vitæ. ‘By God’s breid I was, but not in the cargo: in the fender casks. I tell ye, I had a dainty hand on the tiller yon day, drawing
Magdalena
off frae the jetty. Ae dunt on the planking, and guns would’ve burst from they fenders like a nursing mother out o’ her bodice.… Man, are ye weel? Ye’re not drinking!’

‘I’m not drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ Lymond said crisply.
Thompson’s voice, as always, had early grown thick. As always, it was not likely to get any thicker, since although Thompson’s capacity was phenomenal, he had a head like an ox.

Now, he flung back his head and, without swallowing, let the blistering spirit run down his throat. Then he banged down his cup and refilled it, staring at Lymond. ‘Better men than you, friend, have yet to see Jock Thompson drunk.’

He turned his seamed, seaman’s eyes on Lord Culter. ‘It’s a grief, just, tae see a friend gone girlish as to the guts. I see
you’ve
not spared the flagon, my lord, and there you are, sober as one of the Pope’s knights.’ He had drunk just enough to be quarrelsome. ‘So drink sends the wee fellow foolish?’

Blacklock, raising his brows, looked down at his long hands. But Jerott Blyth, a glint in his black eyes, watched Lymond. Last year in France, he well knew from the gossip at home, Francis Crawford had nearly wrecked his career and succeeded in poisoning himself with unbridled drinking. In Malta he had been moderate. Here in Scotland he had stopped drinking completely—taking no risks, it seemed clear, of being led into excess. It roused in Jerott, who had perfect self-discipline, an emotion of purest contempt.

‘… And,’ the old corsair was adding, pulling a face, ‘you’ll not be one nowadays for the lassies. Devil a rape; barely a wee lonesome damn. Jesus, it’s a wonder ye’ll sit with an auld hoor like myself.’

‘I’ll sit with you as long as I can stand you, but I’m damned if I’m going to bore myself to death launching imitation orgies to satisfy your sense of power,’ said Lymond without visible emotion. ‘If you’ve finished your unsavoury meal, then sit back and drink yourself into a coma while I attempt to dispose of our business.’

It was the signal for Culter to leave and he began to do so, with amusement, promising himself to find out later from Francis what had happened. Thompson’s voice, raised unexpectedly, halted him. ‘Aye. But I only do business with
men
.’

‘Obviously. With drunk men,’ said Lymond patiently. ‘I suppose you know if you take any more yourself you’ll be as full as a sow?’

‘I can hold it,’ said Thompson coldly, uplifting and emptying his cup in instant response. ‘It’s a right shame you’re feart. Ye’ll never know now, will ye, what the news is about Cormac O’Connor?’

Lymond’s eyes met his brother’s and Lord Culter, a little more sober than a moment before, achieved his withdrawal. Blacklock, who had not moved, said quietly, ‘Would you like us to leave?’ But before Lymond could answer, Thompson said jovially, ‘Leave? What for should ye leave? We’ve only St Mary’s business to discuss, if we even do that. I keep my gossip for a man who has a man’s way with liquor.’

In the ensuing brief silence, Jerott saw that Adam Blacklock’s
attention was fixed on Francis Crawford, and that Lymond’s blue eyes were blazing with irritation and anger. Lymond said, his voice soft, ‘You’ve been too long at sea, butty. You need a lesson in shore drinking and shore manners both.’

And when Blacklock, his face anxious, made a sudden move to demur, Lymond turned on him, then rising, flung open the door. ‘… But let’s clear out the ranks of the sanctified first, before we exercise our inordinate appetites against the Lord God Almighty.’

And in silence, Jerott Blyth and Blacklock both left.

Long after midnight, a man waiting patiently in the dark courtyard of the inn saw the lit casement window of the pirate Thompson’s room swing slowly open, and Lymond stood silently there, his hand on the latch, the half-spent candles rimming his crisp hair with silver. The good smell of horses and leather, the stink of the midden, the night breathings of spring blossom and trees reached him out of the darkness.

Behind him, singing softly to himself, the pirate Thompson sat a little sunk in his chair, wet beard lost in wet beaver. He was not noticeably drunker than he had been over his supper: just a little hazy of smile and over friendly of manner. He had, in a sense, won. He had made Lymond drink with him, glass for glass, since the other three men had gone. Made him, in the sense that there was information which Francis Crawford badly wanted, and which Thompson’s own good sense of preservation had already warned him it was dangerous to give.

Once before, at Dumbarton, when for the price of a sapphire, he had purchased the woman Hough Isa, he had eluded Lymond’s questions on this preposterous ground. On the other hand, he liked the man. Lymond had done him good service at Tripoli, and he owed him an act of friendship. So, with his own brand of logic, Thompson had done the thing in his own way. If Lymond would let dignity go hang and crack a bottle—several bottles—with his old gossip, ending in whatever state of high foolishness he feared, Jockie Thompson would impart his tidings from Ireland.

And that was what he, Jockie Thompson, had done. He had started talking, in fact, a little earlier than he had meant, because they were drinking so blithely together, and his stories had gone over uncommonly well. So Lymond knew that he, Thompson, had been running arms and English harp groats into Ireland, and in the Earl of Desmond’s dank castle had made rendezvous with Cormac O’Connor, that well-known rebel whose father was in an English prison and whose life till now had been devoted to trying to turn the English out of Ireland.

But Cormac O’Connor, that big wily brute, was also Thompson’s own partner in a neat little swindle whereby merchants insured ships
and cargo they knew very well to be about to be robbed by Thompson and his friends, and afterwards got the insurance money and at least part of the cargo.

‘So you told me,’ had said Lymond pleasantly. ‘You didn’t tell me, however, that the Kerrs were clients of yours.’

He was a smart fellow, was that Crawford. ‘They werena,’ Thompson replied. ‘Not then. They are now. But if they’re boasting about it, I’ll cut their gizzards.’