The Disorderly Knights (6 page)

‘No.’ Lymond used the same tongue. ‘Or the captain would not have admitted me to his horse.’

There was a pause. ‘Where there is a simple man,’ said the Chevalier thoughtfully, ‘the apt punishment is sometimes not death but shame.’

Cleansed of paint, Lymond’s fair-skinned face was mildly forbearing. ‘It is understood. We preferred not to expose those foresworn fools living round Roxburgh to the kind of retribution London would make if their captain were killed. Instead, we made a fool of him.’

‘But Sir Ralph Bullmer, from what I hear, is not a fool.’ M. de Villegagnon could flatter as well.

‘Luckily, or he would have charged us. As it was, Nell of Cessford was the only person they hurt—’

‘They killed her,’ broke in Tom Erskine bluntly.

The eyes of the man Lymond and Sir William Scott met. Lymond said nothing. M. de Villegagnon, watching, saw the young knight flush; then Erskine, who in his own country preferred forthrightness to finesse said, ‘She was a Kerr. Francis told you not to let Hough Isa bring her.’

Will Scott said angrily, ‘Will the Kerrs take revenge for their whores as well?’

‘Let us hope,’ said Lymond, ‘that they will look on you as her would-be protector, and that Grizel never hears of it with a blunt instrument to hand. If someone would introduce me to M. de Villegagnon I could sit down.…’

*

Late that night with Tom Erskine (they drew spills for it) quietly asleep on the camp bed, and Will Scott’s red head buried in his saddle while his soft palate buzzed and rattled with his dreams, Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon rose, and crossing the small crowded room the four shared, noiselessly paused at the hearth. In the glimmering red of the fire, the only light in the room, his height seemed inhuman, his bulk measureless, his silence uncanny, like the nesting owl with raked eyeballs pat to her claws. ‘This play acting today, it entertains you?’ he said.

In the depths of the carved chair where he had chosen to sleep,
Lymond’s breathing did not change, nor in the toneless flood of red light did his face alter. He said briefly, ‘It served its purpose. We are not all children of destiny.’

The solid body of the French knight was motionless also. ‘I have heard a man whose lover has been killed speak like that,’ he said.

Lymond’s voice repeated drily, ‘A
man
?’ and in the buried red light, the Chevalier’s face creased, as if he smiled. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But my premise remains. Not for all of us, the common dynastic toil. You, for example, have all the comfort you need at home and need seek no gentler company.’

‘I am a great respecter of comfort,’ said Lymond, and at the edge on his voice the Chevalier began to be satisfied. ‘I meant merely,’ he said, speaking always softly, ‘that having none of the duties of an older brother, I saw a noble future before you at the Queen Dowager’s side.’

‘… And men of religion are not,’ stated Lymond, as if he had not spoken. ‘Furthermore, at each of the Queen Dowager’s many sides, she already has a brother de Guise.’

Beside Lymond’s chair stood a rush stool, warm from the fire. De Villegagnon bent and sat on it, his broad back to the dark room, and began at leisure to untie his fine shirt. He said, ‘I know, of course, that a good many Scotsmen fear to become provincials of France. The Queen Dowager is not the Regent for her daughter, and yet she and the French Ambassador seem to make all the decisions that matter. Also, she and the King of France are of the Old Religion, and those of you who lean towards the reformed church would deliver Scotland to her old enemy England, with earth and stone and the clappers of her mills, rather than risk religious martyrdom with France.’

‘You flatter us,’ said Francis Crawford; and leaning forward to grasp the long poker, lifted the structure of the fire. Heat and light, silently refreshed, enveloped them both. Lymond, sinking back in his place, was smiling. He said, ‘If you look, you may find Crusading consciences here, but not among the families that count. The Douglases and the Kerrs and the rest favour England because their land is near the Border and open to English attack, or else because under English rule they might have a chance of second-hand power.’

‘And the Crawfords?’ asked the Frenchman.

There was a second’s pause. ‘My brother, like Tom Erskine there, and the Scotts, happens to believe that until she has a strong Crown of her own, this nation will recover as well under French supervision as any other. We are too weak in manpower to be independent, even if our ruling families could combine and agree. And we are too poor to employ mercenary soldiers. France, after all, who can pay, puts the finest engineers and fortification experts, the best soldiers and
seamen’—Lymond bowed gravely to the seated Chevalier—‘at our disposal for nothing, along with the money to pay them.’

‘And you?’ asked de Villegagnon at last. ‘If the Turk offered to protect Scotland on the same or better terms, would you accept them?’

The other man looked up, amused. ‘We
have
accepted them, have we not?’ And as de Villegagnon, caught unawares, was momentarily silent, for the secret alliance between France and the Commander of the Faithful was not yet common knowledge, Lymond went on murmuring. ‘Tell me: as Knights of St John who are also honoured servants of the kingdom of France—do you and Leone Strozzi, for example, fail to find this alliance between France and Turkey troublesome? Or do you have all the comforts you need at Fontainebleau?’

The ensuing silence was abrupt. Then the Chevalier de Villegagnon, always in an undertone, gave a laugh. ‘A hit. My answer is that the Franco-Turkish alliance is a paper one, to preserve France from the threat of the Emperor Charles V. The Knights of Malta are international. Whatever their allegiance by birth, their first duty is to Malta and the Bishop of Rome. We have all taken the same vows, soldiers and priests, of chastity, poverty and obedience, and have dedicated ourselves to the victory of the Christian world over the infidel.’

‘To fight with a pure mind for the supreme and true King,’ quoted Lymond. It was impossible to tell what he thought.

‘If I made you leader today of fifteen hundred mercenaries, for whom or for what would you fight?’ asked the Chevalier de Villegagnon suddenly. He was ready to wait for his answer. He only became slowly aware that the man in the chair was shaking with silent laughter.

‘Not another! By the Blessed Gerard, father of the poor and the pilgrims, not another!’ said Francis Crawford on a shattered breath. ‘Is Europe desperate for second-hand captains, direct from the fripperers, that every courier seems bent on seducing me with a new-matched set of ethics? … If I had fifteen hundred soldiers, and tried to use them either for or against the Queen Mother, there would be civil war in Scotland in a week, and no Scots left to talk of it in another.’

‘Then you must needs use them elsewhere,’ said the Chevalier blandly. ‘You are not a fledgeling. Where does your manhood suggest?’

‘My manhood suggests,’ said Lymond thoughtfully, ‘that I should like to meet Sir Graham Reid Malett’s sister Joleta, but not necessarily with fifteen hundred mercenary soldiers at my back.’

For a long moment, the knight stared at the Scotsman. In the end, slowly he rose, pulled off his creased shirt and stood dangling it,
rosy-lit with the fire. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, my good sir. What you require in this life is a meeting with Gabriel and his sister.’ And strolling off, he rolled himself in a cloak, settled into a corner, and in five minutes was asleep.

*

The house was quite still and the fire had gone out when Dandy Kerr of the Hirsell and twenty men hammered down the steep cobbles of Jedburgh and erupted into the lower room of Will Scott’s cousin’s house, to avenge the exposure to fatality if not shame of Nell of Cessford on the hill above Crailing.

They jumped off their horses as the town watch came running, broke the door and strode among the recumbent bodies, slashing and stabbing for some time before they noticed that these were merely bran sacks. Attempting then to run upstairs, they met sweet as a kiss with a torrent of Scotts, sword in hand, coming down. In the midst of them, yelling as loud as the rest, were Sir William Scott, Francis Crawford, Thomas Erskine and the Chevalier de Villegagnon.

The rout was spectacular, all the way uphill past the Abbey and out on to the glades and moors and little hills that rolled between Jedburgh and Cessford. At the ford across Oxnam Water, with the trees thick with summer life on either high bank, the remaining Kerrs turned at bay, and in the ensuing water battle, with peach-coloured mud up to the hocks, the horses splashed and drenched the mounted and the fallen, birds called and roe-deer fled, and swords rose and fell merrily until Dandy Kerr and his men, disengaging finally, shot off to Cessford Castle with the larger part of his company intact, which was more than could be said of his stock.

Lymond, grabbing Will Scott’s arm in a hurry, prevented pursuit. ‘Dammit, remember. We’re supposed to be the injured party. I told you Peter Cranston would warn us to avoid an offence to the Almighty in spilling blood on a prostitute’s grave.’

‘The small gentleman with the wounded shoulder?’ asked M. de Villegagnon sympathetically.

Tom Erskine answered, breathless with laughter. ‘Francis asked him to stand watch this evening on the Cessford road, and he’s very anxious to save Francis from sin.’

‘A risk which does not unduly trouble M. Crawford himself,’ said the Chevalier pointedly. ‘He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.’

III
J
oleta

(
Flaw Valleys, May 1551
)

A
LMOST
two years had passed, and peace had been declared between England and Scotland, before the Chevalier de Villegagnon met a Crawford again.

For part of this period, Francis Crawford of Lymond had been living in France, repelling boredom with considerable success among those serving the child Queen Mary of Scotland at the French Court. He was there while the Queen Dowager of Scotland came to visit her daughter; and he was still there when his brother Richard, Lord Culter, came to serve the child Queen in his turn, and thankfully, in due course, left the French Court once more for home.

Boats for Scotland, in these days of brisk piracy, of offended Flemings and outraged English and well-armed Spaniards, were not frequent or cheap. At Dieppe, Lord Culter, a quiet but effective traveller, made a number of calls, and then sat back and played backgammon until word reached him, one day at his inn, that a French galley was leaving for Scotland that night.

In half an hour, Richard had established that, as a royal ship of the King of France’s fleet, the galley would take no paid passengers; that the master was not averse to money; that the decision to accommodate one of the Scottish Queen Dowager’s Councillors rested with a certain royal official now lodging with the Governor at Dieppe Castle; and that this officer’s name was Nicholas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon. In an hour, neatly turned out in brown cloth and gold satin, Lord Culter presented himself at the castle of Dieppe.

The reunion was a civilized one. M. de Villegagnon, whose vows of poverty were elastic, wore a triangular jacket frilled at neck and cuff, to which were appended vast sleeves layered like cabbages. Richard, entering the private parlour set aside for the Chevalier by his host, became aware of a level of grandeur which had been present, but not obtrusive, in the cold harassed ditches outside Haddington. Several gentlemen in attendance and two pages in the Chevalier’s livery rose as he entered. Further, beyond the Chevalier’s portable priedieu, two nuns and an older lady in plain clothes collected their skirts,
rose and curtseyed. M. de Villegagnon introduced one of the gentlemen as his secretary and another as his priest, and the elderly lady by name without any explanation at all. Then Richard, who knew when it paid best to be direct, broached his need of transport to Scotland, and consequent interest in the Chevalier’s galley tied up at the quay.

In the old-fashioned room, hung with mementoes of Dieppois voyages, there was a busy silence, filled by M. de Villegagnon repeating the question to gain time. His eyes, Lord Culter observed, rested on the calm face of the old lady. She, apparently unaware of this, continued with a piece of fine sewing. Only, without looking up, she said, ‘Mademoiselle would be the better of an escort, I believe.’

To live without property and to guard my chastity
, thought Richard, and kept his face grave. M. de Villegagnon, however, smiled and said, ‘Forgive me, my lord. The ship you speak of is about to convey to Scotland a special charge of mine, a young lady who has been placed in my care. Being convent-bred and very young, she is unused to strangers, which is why I hesitated to mention her name. But if Madame Donati is satisfied.…’

The old lady with the sewing, raising her powderless face, nodded her old-fashioned headdress and stared at Lord Culter.

‘Then I think we might ask Mile Joleta to give you leave.’

‘She is at her prayers,’ said one of the nuns breathlessly.

‘I shall fetch her,’ said the other; and with a heaving of black skirts she left.

‘Joleta,’ thought Richard. ‘Where have I heard …?’

Then she was in the room, and his mouth opened just a little, and stayed open. ‘Joleta,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon comfortably, watching him. ‘Mistress Joleta Malett, sister of Sir Graham Reid Malett, Knight of St John of Jerusalem and my most famous friend of the Order in Malta.’

Madame Donati, who had risen, walked round and took the girl’s hand. ‘Gabriel’s sister,’ she said.

Joleta Reid Malett of the apricot hair was then just sixteen. Lord Culter never knew what she wore. The robe fell from childish white wrists, hazy with freckles, and veiled all her small bones from neck to floor. Above and over it, smooth as silk floss, the shining apricot hair fell back from the matt skin, flushed and speckled with sun. He saw her white teeth, exposed unconsciously like a child’s below the soft upper lip, and her eyes, white-lashed aquamarine, filling her face. Then, because he was near suffocation, Richard Crawford, insufflating mournfully, refilled his lungs. Flushing, he caught de Villegagnon’s eye, and then found it in him to smile. He was staid, intelligent, and not overlong married to a ravishing wife; but Joleta Malett would always stop your breath for a moment, unless you were blind.