The Disorderly Knights (76 page)

‘Reasonably well put,’ said Fergie Hoddim, ‘You could add that the arguments were extremely cogent; and that we have the further testimony, not yet put forward, of a most estimable witness in M. de Nicolay. There is a basis for further examination; there is no doubt of that. Even a case for forethocht felony, forthwith.’

‘Blacklock?’ Richard said.

‘I have known for some time,’ Adam said. It seemed as if he had known it for ever; and that with trust had gone all that he had ever believed.

‘And Guthrie?’

Alec Guthrie, whose profession was arms and whose first loves were honesty and justice and human rights, said, ‘I have weighed these two men also, long before today. What we all must remember, and keep remembering, is that this is not the Church against the rebellious intellect, just as it is not a struggle of Christian values perverted against a great faith.’ Alec Guthrie paused and, his eyes on Lymond’s still face, grinned.

‘The argument got a bit specious to my mind at times: if there’s a man in the district with a soul white as a burde claith, it’s not Francis Crawford. But in Graham Reid Malett goes a monk who is false as a diamond of Canada. I’ll join your verloren hoop.’

‘And I!’ said Thompson, and crashed his knotted fist on the board so that the empty cups rattled. And as Richard sat down, satisfaction on his face, and the women nodded agreement, Lymond spoke calmly.

‘We are, then, unanimous. We are high-handed together; and if we do the Church wrong, then we cough together in hell. There are questions you will wish to ask of myself and de Nicolay, and tasks I have to burden you with. These will do later. There is food coming, I am told. Let us forget Graham Malett, briefly, till after that.’

It was over. Stretching painfully, Adam wondered if his aching back were his alone, or shared by them all. The tension had been at times as much as he could stand; the summing-up, now he came to think of it, deliberately brief.

At his side, Lymond rose. They were all getting up, stamping their feet, smiling, a little subdued because of what they had learned and what they had undertaken. Thompson, heaving up from beside Sybilla, reached out a hairy wrist to thump her son’s back.

But Lymond had gone, moving unnoticed between chair and table and the disordered, discoursing company in the flickering light. The door clicked and Adam, shouldering swiftly towards it passed Archie Abernethy, thoughtfully chewing a chicken bone. The former Keeper removed it, revealing the gap-toothed cavity of his mouth, and said, ‘In a moment, sir. He hasn’t gone far.’ Adam opened the door.

It was true. A little below him, where the stair widened to accommodate a window embrasure, Lymond had stopped to look through the panes, one hand gripping the woodwork.

The fingers of that hand were white with pressure. Adam Blacklock stepped back quickly from his vantage point, and silently closing the big doors, walked round the table to find Sybilla, and salute her.

XIV
T
he
A
xe
F
alls

(
St Mary’s, September 1552
)

C
HEESE
-
WAME HENDERSON
was a big man, despite the pot-belly that gave him his name. He was not the first of his family to serve the Somervilles; he had grown up with the kind severities of Gideon and worshipped his widow Kate. But most of all, he was marshmallow in the hands of Philippa, whom he had taught to look after her ponies and pets, and who had taught him in return the family brand of acid and affectionate humour.

When Philippa had first demanded his help in eluding Kate and travelling to St Mary’s, he had indignantly refused. He was there now because he had discovered, to his astonishment, that she was desperate, and perfectly capable of going without him. Why she had got it into her young head she must see this man Crawford, Cheese-wame didn’t know. But after pointing out bitterly that (
a
) he would lose his job; (
b
) the rogues in the Debatable would kill them, (
c
) that she would catch her death of cold and (
d
) that Kate would never speak to either of them again, he went, his belt filled with knives and her belongings as well as his own in the two saddlebags behind his powerful thighs, while Philippa rode sedately beside him on her smaller horse, green with excitement, with her father’s pistol tied to her waist like a ship’s log and banging against her thin knees.

They had a long way to go. For September, it was a mild night, and the reeking warmth of her horse and the steady trot pioneered by Cheese-wame, who had no desire to be caught by his fellow-servants before the lass had got whatever it was she wanted, kept Philippa warm. Riding beside the waters of the North Tyne, the fallen leaves sodden below her mare’s busy hooves and Henderson’s comforting bulk beside her, and his big hand ready to steady hers on the reins, Philippa felt her stomach turn, again, at what she had decided to do.

After mature reflection; on information received; from the wisdom of her encroaching years, she had reached the conclusion that she had made a false judgement.

Once, long ago, Francis Crawford had reduced her to terror and, the episode over, she had suffered to find that for Kate, apparently,
no reason suggested itself against making that same Francis Crawford her friend.

He was not Philippa’s friend. She had made that clear, and, to be fair, he had respected it. He had even, when you thought of it, curtailed his visits to Kate, although Kate’s studied lack of comment on this served only to make Philippa angrier.

He had been nasty at Boghall. He had hit her at Liddel Keep. He had stopped her going anywhere for weeks.

He had saved her life.

That was indisputable.

He had been effective over poor Trotty Luckup, while she had been pretty rude, and he hadn’t forced himself on her; and he had made her warm with his cloak.

He had gone to Liddel Keep expressly to warn her, and when she had been pig-headed about leaving (Kate was right) he had done the only thing possible to make her.

And then he had come to Flaw Valleys for nothing but to make sure of her safety, and he had been so tired that Kate had cried after he had gone. And then it had suddenly struck her, firmly and deeply in her shamefully flat chest, so that her heart thumped and her eyes filled with tears, that maybe she was wrong. Put together everything you knew of Francis Crawford. Put together what you had heard at Boghall and at Midculter, what you had seen at Flaw Valleys, and it all added up to one enormous, soul-crushing entity.

She had been wrong. She did not understand him; she had never met anyone like him; she was only beginning to glimpse what Kate, poor maligned Kate, must have seen all these years under the talk. But the fact remained that he had gone out of his way to protect her, and she had put his life in jeopardy in return.

A year ago this month, on his deathbed, Sir Thomas Erskine had given her a message for Lymond. It was his right to have it. And whatever his anger at the delay, whatever danger they faced on the journey, she was firmly resolved to deliver it. Lion-hearted; her tremors braced with virtue, Philippa trotted on.

At Tarset they stopped for some bread and cheese that Henderson had prudently packed in his saddlebag, and drank burn water although Cheese-wame had, she noticed, been providential in this respect also and provided himself with a serviceable corked bladder from which he drank by the little flickering fire he had made, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. But for the gentle sound of beasts cropping in the commonlands they had passed, it was totally quiet, now their ears were free of the noisy river, bubbling and shearing high in its banks. Picking their way back to it after their rest, Cheese-wame halted once, his hand on her arm, and they both
listened, but the sound, whatever it was, had stopped, and soon they remounted and went on their way.

They were to ride all night, Cheese-wame said; and by dawn they might be past the Cheviot Hills and into Scotland itself, where they could look for a small inn in Liddesdale to rest. If Mistress Somerville sent after them, she would never think of looking so far. Then tomorrow afternoon, not to tire the little mistress, they would ride to Hawick and stop at Buccleuch’s house of Branxholm, where she would be welcomed and not made to go home. Then, after a night’s rest, they would take her to St Mary’s.

It seemed to Philippa a good programme, apart from the allowance of rest for the little mistress, which was excessive, she felt. But long before her mare, now slowed to a walk, had begun to climb the long, grey reaches of the Border, she found creeping into her mind a little, gem-like fantasy of herself, in her thickest white nightie, and even her bedsocks, and even a hot brick as well, curled up on her mattress filled with Bass Rock feathers, under her striped woollen blankets and her silky cotton-stuffed quilt, with the curtains run all round the rods and a candle beside the bed, and a book, and nothing else except her own warm, breathed-out air. ‘I’ve got a blister on my bottom,’ said Philippa. ‘Let’s sing a long song. A rude one would be nice.’ And because Cheese-wame Henderson was a simple man, as well as a nice one, they sang.

The big tinker had a hill pony, unshod, with feet like a baby’s. On the soft ground the little, slippered beat could hardly be heard, and he had wrapped the bit and stirrups with fragments of rag. He travelled light; all his worldly possessions buried carefully in a marked spot by Tyneside, and carried only a bit of sacking with some food in it, and a long knife, and a blackthorn club, tied to the saddle.

He took his time. He wanted to think about Cheese-wame Henderson, to begin with; and he liked privacy for his violence, well away from the commerce of Northumberland, where sheltering nature did half the job for you. So he followed carefully, and drew back at Tilsit where, not far away, the cottagers were too nosy; and then, dropping back as the river thinned and quietened, he pattered gently behind Philippa and Cheese-wame, waiting his moment.

*

At Boghall the meeting was over very quickly, once they had eaten. Lymond had left first, to go straight to St Mary’s, and Nicolas de Nicolay was to follow shortly. Janet, with Tosh in attendance, had wanted to return to Branxholm, and Lady Jenny, knowing her anxiety about Wat, let her go. Alec Guthrie had gone with her. And Thompson, Hoddim and Blacklock had dispersed also, with business to do.

Riding home with her older son silent beside her, Sybilla showed despite herself the strain of the past hours. She had been bitterly concerned about Francis returning to St Mary’s now. Collect your evidence by all means, she had argued; and when you have it complete, take it to the Queen Dowager and let her act. But why go back yourself, when you know that the trap is about to close? Gabriel is about to make his definitive bid for leadership with the help of Joleta. The Queen Dowager, when she hears about the
Magdalena
, will be forced for the sake of peace with England to support him. Why risk your life?

‘I like my fun,’ Francis had said briefly. Pressed, he had given other reasons. His strength had been, and still was, his supposed ignorance of Graham Malett’s nature. Until the proofs he needed were gathered, such as they were, he must not put Gabriel on his guard. Then, since messages had to pass between Joleta and St Mary’s, and between London and Falkland, there were probably a few days in hand before anything could happen. Joleta, obviously, was unable to travel. The news—the shattering news, said Francis ironically, his eyes hard—would break with maximum impact, when he and Gabriel and as many as possible of the disaffected were present. In Gabriel’s eyes, Lymond must realize now that Joleta was about to confess to her brother what he had done to her. If Lymond stayed away now, it would be open cowardice, from which Gabriel could make any capital he liked. On the other hand.…

‘It is always possible, you know, that he may overreach himself,’ Francis had said calmly, tucking her skirts round the planchet for her. ‘He’s not the only
rhétoriceur
in this cringing district. And although I can’t expose Joleta for what she is, she may expose herself. It is, in any event, a battle I have to face and survive if I can. Because I cannot, in the end, ask these men to follow me unless they know what they are following. They are hand-picked, after all, and not fools. All I have to fear is the hysteria of the moment, and I think I can deal with that.’

‘One blessing,’ said Sybilla now reflectively to her other son as they rode. ‘I needn’t try to like Madame Donati any more.’ And as he continued silent, she said sympathetically, ‘You liked Sir Graham, didn’t you? It seems a pity, but I had really rather have you friends with Francis.’

Richard said drily, ‘Like you and Evangelista Donati, I suppose I felt I should like him. He is the only man I have ever met who had the stature to handle Francis, and the only one of whom I knew Francis afraid. It is a tragedy to Francis as well as to the Order that this is the outcome. If he survives this at all, it will leave him in unquestioned command.
And he needs a master
.’

‘Or a mistress,’ Sybilla remarked.

*

Very near the Border, they were seen crossing the Kielder Burn, but Cheese-wame said it didn’t matter. By that time Philippa was almost too tired to keep in the saddle, and Cheese-wame, it would seem, had lost some of his confidence as well, or he would not have turned off the main route across the high fells to take the wheel causeway to Wauchope Forest.

The scrub and windblown pine trees, black in the greying light, gave at first the illusion of warmth and shelter from the little, pestering dawn wind; but then Philippa began to shiver again, and Cheese-wame, suspecting at length their direction, stopped both horses, and lifting her down from the saddle, built a roaring fire for them both on the steep slopes of the hill, the flame blown in guttering tassels against the black pines, while they waited for light.