The Disorderly Knights (53 page)

‘They are, but I’ve warned them that you would do exactly that. You also said that George Paris acted as your joint agent.’

‘Aye.’ It was about George Paris, the well-known secret agent used so freely in the plots between Ireland and France to oust the English from Dublin, that he had to tell. ‘There’s a queer rumour come from the Irish exiles in London that’s just come to the ears of Desmond. I was there when he told O’Connor. The story goes that George Paris is a double agent.’

‘Oh?’ Lymond did not seem specially impressed. Thompson repeated gravely, ‘
A double agent
. Working for the English as well. Taking money from the Privy Council. Giving away, maybe, all the plans to throw the English out.’

‘Well, who’s worried?’ said Lymond. ‘France is trying to make friends with England; she won’t try anything silly now, whatever friend Cormac is hoping. The only Irish conspirators George Paris could denounce are rebels already, and the Scottish Government, while offering their wholehearted moral support, has done nothing very active to promote the said throwing-out. But if you’re anxious, why doesn’t Cormac tell his friend the Scottish Queen Mother, and she can have Paris imprisoned on some trumped-up charge?’

‘He’s in France,’ said Thompson, avoiding his eye.

‘He is now. But he was in London at the beginning of the year, handing over gifts from the French to the English King.… Jockie, my gentle
écumeur de mer
, that of course would be when the Privy Council agreed to employ him. Then he came up here and conspired with the Queen Mother. I was told he even sent rings and messages and secret expressions of profoundest goodwill to Cormac’s father in jail—the appalling deceiver,’ said Lymond cheerfully. ‘Why wasn’t the Queen Dowager told then? Oh
Jockie
, Cormac wants the money from the insurance parties, and can’t bear to lose Paris’s help? Ireland, Ireland! Where are your true sons now?’

Thompson was not, for the moment, amused. ‘I told him anyway that the woman O’Dwyer was deid,’ he said carelessly. ‘He didna ken she was taken to Tripoli, and he didna fancy the way he thinks you got rid of the lass in the end. I told him it wasna deliberate, but I doubt he’s no friend of yours.’

‘He never was,’ said Lymond. It was then, Thompson remembered,
that he got up suddenly and pouring out a whole beakerful of aquavitæ, opened the pirate’s whiskered mouth with an iron forefinger and thumb, and emptied it in.

With the elegance of long practice, Thompson’s epiglottis went into action and the spirit flowed placidly down. At the end, ‘Ye didna need tae do that!’ said Jockie Thompson indignantly. ‘I can open ma mou’ without being helped to it.’

His hand falling, Lymond looked down and against his will, it seemed, laughed. ‘I suppose you can,’ he said, and tossing the cup away, walked to the window.

He walked, perhaps a little carefully, and his eyes were a little too bright; but the corsair’s gaze followed him, frankly admiring. What the embargo had been, who could tell? But there was no doubt about this. Francis Crawford could drink.

Then Lymond opened the window, and a man watched below.

*

If he had been watching still five minutes later, which he was not, he would have seen the candles snuff out as Thompson, fully clothed, rolled happily into bed; and just before that, the progress of a single taper from window to window as Lymond moved down the long gallery to his room.

From the shadows behind his just-open door, Adam Blacklock, who had had a long vigil, saw Lymond reach his own door, open it, and stop dead, the light from a hidden fire bright on his face. There was a pause, then Francis Crawford spoke sharply to someone within.

‘
What are you doing here
?’

If there was an answer, Adam Blacklock couldn’t hear it. Behind him, Jerott’s light breathing went evenly on. Blacklock waited until Lymond’s door silently closed, then shut his own with equal sound-lessness and went back to bed.

*

Had he been quite sober and quite fresh, Lymond would probably not have spoken at all. As it was, he had the presence of mind to shut his door, and leaning back on it, to gaze across the small tavern bedchamber at his unsolicited guest.

Seated in dogged discomfort by the hearth, her riding cloak clutched sweatily about her, her hair falling sheer to her knees and the colour itself of the flames, Joleta Malett was waiting. Lymond’s icy blue stare fell on her; Lymond’s blurred voice snapped, ‘
What are you doing here?
’ and great, clear aquamarine tears sprang into
her eyes and fell sparkling down her pink baby skin. With a kind of strangled grunt, she put the back of one wrist to her nose, and scrabbling frantically in her skirts with the other hand, gave a real sob of anguish. ‘
My handkerchief!
’

Lymond stayed where he was. ‘I haven’t got one,’ he said. ‘Blow your nose on your bloody sleeve. I won’t look. I suppose everyone in Lennox and district knows that you’re here?’

The lorn apricot head shook. ‘Luke and Martin came with me yesterday. I’ve got a room in another wing. Lady Culter and Madame Donati think I’m with Jenny.’ She gave another sob, and cut it off. ‘You’ve been
hours
.’

‘My apologies, of course,’ said Lymond politely. ‘But I wasn’t aware that I had invited you. How did you know I was coming?’

Wrapped modestly in her furry cloak, in the appalling heat of the room, she could look beautiful even when sniffing. ‘Graham said that Thompson was waiting for you, and that you were in the south and would be sure to come soon. So I came to wait for you.’

‘In the belief that no one would notice an unescorted female of good family putting up at a shore tavern with two grooms. You may as well divest your modest attractions of their outer wrapping. My hot young blood can stand it. And your reputation has presumably gone anyway. You came to wait for me. Why?’

Slowly, Joleta took off her cloak. Underneath, her dress was a young green: a web-like wool finely gathered under her breasts and covering her soft arms down to the wrists. Her little, sparkling teeth whose sibilants frosted her every phrase were sunk in her lip. Taking off her cloak was an effort, socially as well as physically: her golden skin was deep pink.

Lymond made no effort to help. Only, as the fur fell to the ground and she sat in her meadowland of green, twisting her hands, he drew a long, quiet breath and expelled it before he repeated, ‘Why?’

‘To say I’m sorry.’ Her chin, so like Gabriel’s, was up; her eyes, so like Gabriel’s, were pleadingly, defiantly, on him. ‘I’m sorry about Kevin. I’m s-sorry about losing my temper. I don’t want you to hate me.’

Lymond shifted his position, fractionally, against the door. ‘Sir Graham doesn’t want me to hate you.’

She flushed again, and then paled, so that the ginger freckles contoured all the exquisite face. ‘I know. But this isn’t to please Graham. And you must know Graham wouldn’t let me do this.’

‘Why ever not?’ said Lymond ironically. ‘You’re perfectly safe; it’s only your reputation that’s ruined. I be lightly drunken, as the man said, and have but little appetite to meat.’

Tears stood in her eyes but did not, this time, spill over. She stood up. ‘You don’t forgive me.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Francis Crawford lightly. ‘I dislike you, Joleta.’

There was a moment of complete and cataclysmic surprise. Then the tears, unregarded, fell from Joleta’s immense, open eyes, her jaw dropped and she said, ‘But you
can’t
dislike me!’

Laughter, remotely, stirred in the cool blue eyes. ‘Well, that was genuine, anyway,’ he said. ‘Don’t strain yourself trying to believe it. But I am a strange man to meddle with, that’s all.’

Her dismay had fetched her half across the small room. In front of him, ‘Don’t you desire me?’ said Joleta, and flushed scarlet again.

Against the door, his eyes heavy with wine, Lymond scanned her from her milky throat to her green-slippered feet. ‘Dear Joleta,’ he said. ‘You’ve been reading too many Italian books. There’s such a thing, you know, as seducing in hate.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Joleta steadily. ‘Love is stronger than hate. Love is stronger than anything. Where there’s love, there can be no evil.’

‘Maybe,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘But I am not, sweeting, in love.’

‘
But I am
,’ said Joleta Malett desperately. And pulling, tight-fisted, at the silken cord that bound her high-waisted dress, she dragged first girdle then buttons apart until the green stuff, gaping loose to the waist, slid from her bare shoulders and hung from her elbows, tight-sleeved like a courtesan’s robe.

She wore nothing beneath. Her flesh breathed sweetness and warmth, and her sixteen-year-old breasts, round and rosy in firelight, lay high and ripe in their calyx of green. Three-quarters stripped, trembling, her eyes black with a queer ecstasy, half missionary, half not, Joleta caught Lymond’s cold, clever hand and slid it round and over and down all her warm flesh.

There was a heady pause. She felt him steady himself after the first, quick-breathing shock; then the fingers which lay so passively in hers suddenly gripped like a vice. She gasped, and in the same moment heard what he had heard: distant galloping hooves which moment by moment became nearer and sharper until in seconds a neighing horse came to a jangling halt in the silent courtyard below. There were running footsteps, then a swordhilt hammered home again and again on the inn’s big oaken door while a harsh voice yelled for admittance.

The voice was the voice of Randy Bell, and the name he was shouting was Lymond’s.

The cries tore across the sleeping peace of the night: the roaring as the angry innkeeper stormed to the doorstep roused every soul in the wing. Across the corridor Jerott Blyth shot up in bed and a moment later Blacklock, grumbling, got out. He said, ‘Christ, it’s Randy. Look, you’re decent at least. Go down and let him in before he breaks down the door. I’ll tell Lymond.’

‘Tell Lymond?’ Jerott was cold, ‘He could hardly help hearing that, unless he’s stone dead.’

‘He may not be dead but he may very likely be stone drunk,’ said Adam with reason. ‘Go on. You had the damned bedclothes all night. You ought to be warm.’

And, repressing a strong desire to curse, Jerott went. As he began to run downstairs Blacklock crossed the corridor and gave an almighty bang on Lymond’s shut door. ‘Francis? Send her out. I’ll take her next door. The room’s empty.’

Before he had finished, the door was open. Inside, Lymond, an extraordinary expression on his face, half of mischief, half of malice, propelled towards Blacklock a slender, golden-topped figure muffled in a great cloak. ‘Look out, she’s half naked,’ said Lymond calmly. ‘And if you force her, you lecherous scribbler, you can explain to Gabriel, not me.’ And, half pulled, half carried, Joleta Malett was carted away.

Two minutes later, Randy Bell was upstairs, taking three at a time, with Jerott casting questions at his heels, and hardly taking time to knock on the door, they were both into Lymond’s room.

Lymond, awake, alert and neatly dressed in London russet, laid down his book by the fire and gravely welcomed them in.

‘It’s the Hot Trodd!’ said Randy Bell. ‘Word came today from the Wardens to St Mary’s. Someone’s taken a great herd of Kerr animals, and Cessford and Ferniehurst are riding over the Border tonight.’

‘How exciting,’ said Lymond, staring at the panting physician. ‘But not enough, I think, to keep me from my modest couch. Sir Graham, I take it, is leading a company after the chosen of the children of Benjamin?’

Randy Bell flung his helmet on a settle and sat down with a crash. ‘That isn’t all. The freebooters have been at Buccleuch beasts as well. Half the Scotts round about Branxholm are off to the Debatable too. All, thank God, except the old man himself. He’s away at Paisley and hasn’t been told.’

‘Now that,’ said Lymond, his voice changing, ‘is news.’ And rising swiftly, he opened the shutters. It was a clear spring night, with Jupiter bright as a diamond above. ‘Give me an hour to finish what I have to do here. Jerott, get dressed and set off at once for St Mary’s with Blacklock and Bell. When I’m ready, I’ll follow. We should get directions there, and fresh horses, and with any luck catch up with Sir Graham before the Scotts and Kerrs find their herds or each other.… It’s a pity it’s such a clear night. Randy, I’m sorry, but you must come back with us. Could you arrange post-horses quickly below while the other two dress?’

‘What remains to do here?’ said Jerott Blyth. If you looked closely
at Lymond’s eyes and caught the smell of his breath, it was plain that Thompson had liberated him from his lofty principles all right.

‘I,’ said Lymond with simple truth, ‘am going to bed.’

Five minutes later, Lymond saw Blyth and Bell off downstairs, and walked across to where Adam Blacklock was hastily dressing.

He had a bitten finger. ‘She w-wanted to scream,’ he said. ‘So I stopped her. Her c-cloak fell off.’

‘I expect it did,’ said Lymond. ‘And then she w-wanted to scream again?’

It was Blacklock’s turn then to realize that he was not perfectly sober. Francis Crawford was not given normally to mimicry unless he wanted to wound. The artist said briefly, ‘N-not on my account, I promise you.’

Lymond looked up suddenly, searching Blacklock’s face; and his own expression altered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t baiting you because of
that
, but you’re a bloody fool, Adam. What happened, you couldn’t sleep and saw Joleta earlier entering my room? In any case, you get the cup and the cash prize as well. Two minutes later and Blyth and Randy Bell would have been in the room, their eyes hung on jemmy-bands.’

‘And now?’ said Blacklock. From the stir below, and the clacking of hooves on the cobbles, they could hear that the others were ready.

He had left a buckle undone. Lymond fastened it, delicately, giving it all his attention, and stood back to admire. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I am going in my drunken lust to visit Gabriel’s sister,
candidior candidis
, the virginal Joleta. And once there, to rifle at leisure her sixteen-year-old charms.’