The Disorderly Knights (65 page)

Gabriel’s grave tender gaze followed him, and then returned to Lymond’s carefree stare. ‘Forgive me. I have made you angry,’ he said. ‘And that in turn has only made matters worse.’

‘Yes, it has, hasn’t it?’ said Lymond. ‘But then meddling interlopers always do. Do you do this for a hobby, or are you writing a book?’

Gabriel’s voice remained steady. ‘I have apologized. I am as foolish as you would have me look. But I only wished from my heart to help.’

‘I,’ said Lymond coolly, ‘am a philocalist of independent means. I help myself. If you can tear yourself away from my family’s affairs, I fancy there is a little work to be done.… Interested, Blacklock?’

Beside Jerott Blyth, and already as far from the centre of the dispute as the crowd would allow, Adam Blacklock flushed scarlet but said hardily, ‘I have a m-message for Sir Graham. The French
Ambassador is here, and would like Sir Graham’s company back to Edinburgh.’

‘Here? At Hadden Stank?’ Lymond’s eyes flickered over the crowd and returned, suddenly inscrutable, to the artist. ‘Then he must be incognito. There is no banner. Are you sure?’

But Blacklock knew, as they all did, the tall, bony person of M. d’Oisel, the French King’s Lieutenant in Scotland and Mary of Guise’s right-hand man, who might well take the occasion, on his way back from the French Court, to slip into a March meeting and make observations thereon. ‘It was M. d’Oisel,’ he said.

Gabriel’s voice was gentle. ‘I saw him, I think. But I could not be sure; you will remember keeping me at your side most of the day.… He is a civilized man. He would enjoy Buccleuch’s little joke with the Kerrs.’ He hesitated. ‘I need not leave with him unless you wish. I have come to know him rather well while pursuing Sandilands’s affairs in Council, that is all.’

‘What, disobey the French Ambassador!’ said Lymond. ‘Let us not tempt Fate with heresies. Go. Go by all means, and let thy mouth be filled with explanations, in French and English, of Buccleuch’s little joke with the Kerrs.’

He did not join M. d’Oisel when that gentleman, with his two attendants, left the ranks of the crowds to pay his respects to the Wardens, and finally to ride off to rejoin the waiting train of his men, Gabriel at his side. More than anything that had so far happened, it underlined Sir Graham Malett’s status and prestige.

The most powerful man in Scotland had not asked to meet Lymond. And if, as an afterthought, he had summoned him, Lymond would not have been there. For, no sooner had Gabriel left than Francis Crawford, without explanation, had handed over his command to Jerott and withdrawn from the field.

*

The blue and silver banner of Culter, dark against the westering sun, was far along the Kelso road, and the burnished helmets of his men at arms, following at speed, bubbled like quicksilver by the calm waters of Tweed when Lymond caught up with his brother.

Among so many pounding hooves Richard Crawford, travelling too fast too early in a lengthy day’s ride, did not hear him approach; did not see him until at his elbow, where he had asked no one to ride, there came, neck outstretched, a bay horse as good as his own which—
God!
—he knew. His throat cold with unnoticed air, his abdomen lodged, it suddenly seemed, in his chest, Lord Culter drove his spurs, like a fugitive, into his splendid mare’s sides. She widened her eyes, the rims white above her hard-breathing nostrils, and
lengthened her already stretched stride. Lymond’s bay did the same.

Insanely, Richard did not even look at his brother. With more than a hundred men streaming breathless behind; with two hundred eyes watching, he put his horse flat out on the meadowland, and knew that he was forcing Francis to use his spurs without pity, too. For what seemed a space endless in time, they remained side by side. Then Lymond’s horse, bearing a lighter man but not, Richard knew, in a childish thundercloud of outraged pride, better ridden, began to draw past.

It was not to be borne. His teeth clenched so that the ache of it, noticed later, drummed in every bone in his head, Richard forced the mare forward. She was a good beast, and he had cared for her. She responded, with a pumping heart, and they were level again.

When he felt the bay begin his next drive to the front, Richard was ready. With spurs, with whip, with knees and thighs like cramping-irons, he held his mare to her pace and past it until she matched the bay nose for nose, and then bettered it: nose forward; ears; neck clear of the bay’s head; then shoulders in front. And finally, her great thighs revolving, she was a clear length in front of his younger brother.

Richard Crawford, his grip slippery, his breeches sodden with the sweat that poured like a gutter down his spine and dripped from jaw, eyebrows, nose, on to his cuirass, looked back and laughed. Far behind, in a pounding cloud of dust, his company laden with armour and weapons, were striving to follow. A length—two lengths, now, behind, Lymond had slackened his grip, the bay’s flanks heaving and foam coating his bit.

Where Richard was limply dishevelled, Lymond’s short, thick hair clung, fronded with sweat to his head; his eyes bright with the moment’s exhilaration in a face as white as Richard’s own. He waited. Then, as the leading horse eased, the race won and its effort expended, Lymond let the bay have the second wind he had been nursing so carefully all along. With an effort that was audible, the big horse pressed itself from canter to gallop again, and from gallop to full racing speed.

It was too late this time for Richard’s horse to respond. In the second it took Culter to gather her, he knew she had relaxed too far already. When he pressed her she pecked, and a rider less excellent than Richard would have gone over her head. Then, although she recovered and put her foot forward bravely enough, the bay was close to her side. A moment later Lymond leaned over and gripping the mare’s bridle hard by the bit, dragged them both to a halt.

By then, the two hundred men for whom Lord Culter was responsible, the familiar faces and the familiar names from all about Midculter were far behind; and towards the river, towards the rising ground on their left, and ahead at the approaches to Kelso were only
strangers; distant hurrying groups; men with their own troubles to attend to.

For a moment, overcome by stress and no doubt by other emotions, the two men on horseback, so similar, so dissimilar, were silent. Then the younger brother took his hand away, his eyes brilliant still from the ride, and unexpectedly laughed. ‘Poor Richard. Always suffering from being such a bloody bad actor; I thought you were going to be sick. I’ve got a question to ask you. Just one.’

It was then that one remembered that Francis very rarely acted without purpose. Lord Cutter’s horse was too spent to outrace the other. And now Richard had left neither the violence nor the will to silence his brother by force. For a moment longer, he stared in silence at his cadet. Then Lord Cutter said, ‘Very well. Since you have forced the encounter, ask the question. Then I have some news for you. If there is time.’

Lymond said quickly, ‘Tell me your news.’ But Richard merely waited in negative silence, his brows raised, while behind them both, the sound of hammering hoof beats told how near were his men, and how slender their privacy was.

Then his lordship of Sevigny said abruptly, as he had to, ‘All right. Richard, how is our … difference so widely known? Did you spread it abroad? Did Sybilla?’

Nothing of Richard’s surprise was allowed to show in his voice. He said, ‘Mother knew nothing herself until she began to hear rumours.’

‘Started by whom?’ Quick, level, precise, it hardly seemed the voice you had heard, a short time before, prostituting unspeakably the wise text of Islâm. Richard said, ‘You, in your cups, I presume.’

‘No. And if you said nothing, and I didn’t either, how did the tale spread that Joleta spent an unchaperoned, unexplained night, and that next day you and I had occasion to quarrel? I haven’t been noticeably absent from Midculter: there hasn’t been time. Yet Buccleuch’s heard it; everyone’s heard it. Not everyone has yet linked the two facts, but they will. If Gabriel had been a shade more persuasive back there and I had been a shade less insensitive, the fair Joleta would have been ruined for ever.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t much care either,’ said Richard. The fore-runners of his band were nearly upon them. ‘Sybilla knows already. It’s too late to shield her now. And everyone else will know soon. I would have told Graham Malett myself, as you feared, except that I couldn’t bear … I couldn’t bear.…’

He halted, rather than attempt the impossible. You did not try to explain goodness to Francis, or gentleness, or humility, or love. Or how you would break the news to a great and generous man that the protégé on whom he had set his heart had rewarded him by forcing his sister.

Against the darkening sky of the east, the Midculter horses were jostling, not yet within earshot but eagerly on the watch. There was only a moment more. ‘So I believe you had better come home,’ said Richard levelly. ‘And soon. There is a certain amount to arrange.’ And as Francis, very still on his horse, continued to stare without speaking, Richard had, with aversion, to put his news into words. ‘It was your mother, you will be proud to hear, who made the discovery. Joleta is to bear you a child.’

Remorse, Richard hadn’t expected to see. But shock, perhaps; and horror perhaps, and consternation certainly. Instead, he realized that the fair, fine-boned face opposite him was livid with pure irritation; an exasperation which not even the failing light could soften or hide.

‘I thought so. God damn it, I thought so,’ said Lymond bitterly. ‘She’s pregnant, the slovenly bitch.’

And sat, gazing frowningly after, as Richard rode precipitately off.

*

The dispositions of St Mary that day were quite perfect. Every man, woman and child for which the company were responsible reached home safely and remained safe. In hilarity at length all those not on guard duty returned at dusk to their base; and the line of torches, ermine-tails in the night, danced in the mirror of the loch as they approached St Mary’s, song and laughter falling aside with their sparks.

Lymond led them. Of the malignant humour of a few hours before there was no trace. Rather he encouraged them to wilder and wilder humour, to chant, to whistle, to recite. To play, once back, on their loose-gutted fiddles in front of the fire, and stamp their feet, and sharpen their wits on each other.

And in their response to Lymond, Jerott noted, silent in the background, a bonhomie that had been missing before. It was not the success, for the latter part of the day had been a success; or the sense of efficient leadership, for this had been growing guardedly, since the mishaps of the winter and the disaster of the Hot Trodd. It was, Jerott suspected, precisely what he himself had found reconciling: the sight of Lymond in helpless laughter after watching Buccleuch make a complete fool of him.

Studying Francis Crawford now, bright-gilded by firelight, quick-voiced, restless, pursued wherever he moved by outbursts of laughter, Jerott understood, for the first time, a little of the machine.

Gabriel was away, so Lymond was soliciting their affections. But by the same token, licence was not without limits. Whether they realized it or not, no extremes of tongue or behaviour were being
permitted, and no excess offensive to the Church. That would please Blacklock and Bell and Plummer and the spiritual faction; just as the sophisticated had been drawn by that prodigal joy at his own expense.… One step out of line and the edge would return to his voice. A respite, for a second, in the chorusing, and his eyes were chilly; hard as blue steel.

So he, Jerott, had been fighting the wind. You
did
not expect human values from a machine. You did not grow angry with a machine, or be disappointed or feel betrayed by it. You treated it with detachment and curiosity, as you would any soul-deprived object, and if it kicked you in the teeth, you side-stepped and kicked it back, harder.

*

At Algiers two weeks later, in the heat of August, the child Khaireddin was branded. The white-hot iron, with which Dragut stamped all his possessions, bore the first word of a famous verse from the Qur’ân, and the old corsair’s initial. It was heated on a brazier just outside the women’s quarters of the palace and impressed with care on the baby skin over the ribs and under the right arm. While it heated, the baby smiled, as he always did, up into the black face of the woman holding him, whose milk had fed him in his five months of life. The spare, curling floss on his head pressed on her arm as he craned upwards, blue eyes joyous, leaf-tongue jammed in the hinge of a pink-padded laugh. Then the eunuch, judging nicely with his eye, brought his hand down.

The uprush of screaming went on for a long time. It was followed by a monotonous throat-scraping squawk, like the hysteria of some large bird in anger that went on repeating all morning, thickening with hoarseness, pausing for a second, fifty seconds, as the baby slipped into sleep only to be pulled out again by pain, to scream and scream over again. The noise wakened even Oonagh O’Dwyer from her own fever, but she had not been told of the branding, and she was not likely to recognize her son’s voice.

Her first and surest instinct, since he was born, had been to destroy him. For that reason she had denied herself every link with him; had hardly held him; had never fed him. Even had she wished, she had been too ill at first.

And then Dragut Rais had come to her, and had snapped his fingers absently over the infant and commenting lightly on his fairness, had asked her if Francis Crawford had sired him, or the Unbeliever who had visited her tent. And as she stared at him, stupid with weakness, she had discovered that nothing, indeed, had escaped the attention of her guards on those hot nights outside Tripoli.

One nocturnal visitor she had had; one treasured night of ultimate peace. And it was from Dragut Rais that she learned that her visitor had not been, could not have been, Francis Crawford.

After that, when she had made her first attempt to make away with first the baby, and then herself, she had botched it The woman Güzel, coming too soon, had taken the child away and restored it, and next time, when she had persuaded the black woman Kedi to give him to her, the negress had run to Güzel and they had taken him from her again.