The Disorderly Knights (77 page)

The soft, resinous pile underfoot made for quiet pacing. The first Cheese-wame knew of the tinker’s presence was a great blow on his back that tumbled him head over heels. It was not until minutes later when, clipped man to man by knee and elbow and wide, muscular hands, they threshed and bounded and crashed among the oak scrub and thorn that he isolated the thin, needling pain within the fading ache of the buffet and felt the tinker’s grasp slide across the thick wet of his leather back, where the blood poured from the tinker’s knife.

Philippa saw the knife between Cheese-wame’s solid shoulders. As the two men rolled downhill past her, their voices lifted in snatches of wordless, guttural anger, she plunged to her feet, and snatching a blazing stob from the fire, ran jumping after them. She saw Cheese-wame’s face, lithographic in grey and black, rear puppet-like over the tinker’s great bulk and the tinker’s shoulders begin their surge from the ground. With all the force of her arm, Philippa brought the flaming wood down on his head.

It burst like a Catherine wheel. Blazing slivers, leaping into skin and sour clothes and hair, sprayed the tinker with fire, while the unburnt stock, a club in her hands, belaboured him as he struggled, both hands to his face.

Face averted, eyes nearly shut in a grimace of insane fright and sheer Somerville resolution, Philippa went on hitting until the man, now really shouting, managed to roll over on to his front and, blazing still, hands to his raw face, to begin to lurch to his knees. Then, dropping the branch, she ran to Cheese-wame.

He was on his feet, swaying. In the dim light the black channels and patches of blood reduced him to shapeless mosaic: even his face, where it was smeared, had acquired grotesque, different salients. Philippa said, her voice shaking, ‘It’s a lot of blood, but that’s a good thing, you know. It washes away the dirt. I think if you could get on your horse I could perhaps hold you on for a bit until … until we get help. Unless,’ said Pippa Somerville, a good deal of the
conviction suddenly leaving her voice, ‘you would like to use my pistol?’

But it was evident, first, that Cheese-wame Henderson was far from aiming and letting off her pistol, and secondly that unless they got away soon, the bleeding, dizzy madman crashing through the scrub would suddenly come to his senses and finish what he had come to do. With fibreless fingers, Philippa somehow managed to tighten the girths on both horses and help Cheese-wame to mount, jammed between her body and a thick, twisted pine. Then they set off.

She did not know where to go. She asked Henderson but he spoke in tight, compressed phrases which she could hardly make out, and since it obviously gave him pain to breathe, let alone to speak, she dared not ask him again.

He needed help. But whom could she safely ask? That had been no chance attack: she knew that unshaven bulk too well. For weeks he had made his camp at Flaw Valleys, scouring the in-fields for scraps; begging in the village. He had followed them in order to kill.

Her young arm round the sagging body of Cheese-wame, aching with the switching pace of their horses, Philippa forced her tired brain to think. Downhill. If she went on downhill with the sun on her right, she would be in Scotland, if they were not there already. There should be crofts and farmhouses in the lower reaches of the hills, and later, she might strike the Slitrig Water, which led straight to Hawick. There were Scotts everywhere inside Hawick, and Branxholm itself a little outside. Then she would be all right.

The main thing was to keep going. She had no idea how badly, if at all, the tinker was hurt. She had seen Cheese-wame use his knife. But he might come after them: they could follow hoofmarks. And she had to get the big man some sort of help.

Philippa removed her arm, and fixing his hands somehow on his own horse’s pommel, hunted for and found his flask. He drank from it as they rode, and although a good deal of it went over his stained jacket, he seemed a little stronger than he had been. The bleeding where the knife had been had stopped, but she undid her saddlebag and stuffed a shift under the stiffening leather to make sure. He looked odd with a hump to his back, and he had whimpered a bit while she did it, but afterwards he rode on in silence, and she only had to hold him now and then. ‘It won’t be long,’ said Philippa cheerfully, her mother’s ring in her voice. ‘You know what Bess says. There’s nothing in this world a drop of aqua-vitæ in a sheep’s bladder won’t cure. Stop the Somervilles with a
knife!
It needs
artillery
.’ And she blew her nose hard.

*

Gabriel’s return to St Mary’s after an absence, like the return to class of some revered but exacting headmaster, was always a comfort to its officers and men. His massive competence spelt security even when, as now, he worked them like dogs.

The efficiency of St Mary’s had been questioned. Therefore, before any emissary of the Queen Dowager or her French Ambassador might descend on them, their house must be put in perfect order. The moment that Jerott Blyth left, charitably to bring the gentle Joleta to her brother, Gabriel called his men before him and set them to work.

Inevitably, in his absence and Lymond’s, the impossible standards they had both set had fallen off. With easy certainty Gabriel set about their repair, issuing formidable orders; walking and riding round all the big establishment to see them carried out; to advise and to help. He demanded that they finish it before Lymond came; and the pace was back-breaking. When darkness fell they continued, by torchlight, eating as they worked.

By midnight, everything in St Mary’s was in order. In all its domains there was no wall broken or fence unrepaired; the beasts were tended and bedded in clean straw, the stores and weapons re-inventoried, the buildings whitewashed outside and washed and painted within. The big house itself reeked of soap, and all the mild disorder of everyday living had gone.

It was done willingly, for Gabriel; but with some private resentment as well. ‘To hell with the Queen Dowager,’ said Lancelot Plummer at one point, flinging down pad and penner. ‘I didn’t join this groat-sized model army to count herring barrels and hay and elevenpenny hogs, and how many bolls of barley we’ve sold to the neighbours at ten shillings under market price. Our lewd friend Crawford got us into the old woman’s black books with his habits. I don’t see why we should get him out.’

The Chevalier de Seurre, working with him, looked up from the sacks. ‘I’ll give you one very good reason,’ he said. ‘Because Graham Malett asks it.’

Cormac O’Connor, spectating, found much entertainment in the sight. He had come, with great reluctance, to visit St Mary’s. Francis Crawford made his hackles rise; and he was afraid, moreover, for his position
vis-à-vis
Thompson the pirate. But, as with them all, Gabriel had somehow reassured and soothed him, and under that benign presence he was willing to wait, he did not know quite why, until tomorrow and even suffer Crawford’s presence, if he came. When, their work exhausted at last, the company foregathered out of the starlit September night and, summoned to the castle itself, found waiting for them by Gabriel’s orders a vast supper set out in the great hall, its savoury steams rising to the fine timbered roof
with the heat from the great blazing fire, Cormac, his heavy face bland, took his place among them at the long officers’ board at the top. Gabriel, from his place beside Lymond’s empty chair, stood waiting to welcome them and then as, by his command, they seized their meat, he thanked them in his magnificent voice for what they had just done. Everything that should be said was expressly said, with no word of blame for their leader’s lapses, and unstinted praise for themselves. Then, having eaten sparingly, he retired, leaving them to unrestricted enjoyment.

‘That’s a gentleman,’ said Cuddie Hob approvingly.

‘That’s a saint,’ said someone else, examining his callouses. ‘But all the same, when I get to Heaven, I don’t want to be in his bloody work-party.’

Then Cormac O’Connor unloaded his gifted contraband, which consisted of twenty puncheons of raw sherry-sack.

*

Ninety minutes later, with the noise ringing over the dark hills from Ettrick to Yarrow, Graham Malett rolled from his narrow bed, and tying his doublet quickly over his creased shirt and hose, went next door where the officers slept. In the first room, de Seurre’s bed was occupied; the knight, his head buried in a huddle of blankets, had not wakened. In the next he found three others, two of them from the Order. There was no sign of the rest. He ran then, light-footed for all his height, down the stairs which led to the Hall.

The big room, finely tapestried and until now used on the rarest occasions by St Mary’s mercenaries and men-at-arms as well as themselves, was so bright, after the cool dark of the dormitories, that the eye ached. With the light came the impact of noise. Between three hundred and four hundred men were talking, shouting, singing, stamping, and arguing noisily in groups. On one of the tables, his boots lobbing cups like quail into the air, someone was dancing a vigorous jig. In a corner, in very slow motion, two archers were fighting in a solemn and concentrated way; and, not unfortunately in a corner, someone else was being sick. Here and there, on or under the benches, the weak-headed had already succumbed on limp heaps. Everyone was very happy.

Unnoticed, Graham Malett stood in the doorway and looked. Then swiftly moving to the top table, the Knight Grand Cross found and laid a hand on Randy Bell’s broad muscled shoulder. The doctor was singing. He looked round, still intoning, and for a moment, meeting Gabriel’s clear eyes, his voice faltered. Then, a look of uncertain nonchalance struggling across his blunt features, he leaned back, carolling again. He was very drunk.

So was Lancelot Plummer. Mingling with the broad golden streams of sack coursing down the fine broadcloth, his tears dropped unregarded on to his hands, turning and turning the empty goblet before him. ‘No one,’ he was saying heavily, ‘can call himshelf man and not mushroom, and fail to cherish the Artsh. Arts.
And lousy beggary hangs upon us!
’ he cried, enunciating fiercely at his neighbour with sudden passion.

Hercules Tait looked up from his arms. ‘We
are
lousy beggary,’ he said distinctly, and shut his eyes again.

Serving Brother des Roches, who had been standing over him, straightened, and seeing Sir Graham, strode over, in rueful relief. ‘It’s a shambles,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve done what I can, but they’re in no mood to be moderate. It was O’Connor’s wine.’

‘The sherry-sack?’ said Gabriel sharply. ‘I said they might share it, by which I meant one serving per man. I gave no orders that they should empty the wain-load down their throats.’

‘Then O’Connor and the rest didn’t understand, sir,’ said des Roches directly. ‘The belief was that they could finish it. They just about have.’

Gabriel’s examining gaze returned to the serving brother, and he smiled. ‘Children, aren’t they? Cunning and foolish at once. Let’s see what can be done with them.’ And, stepping again to his place, he collected a pewter wine-pot and with it, banged on the board.

All his life, des Roches and the few who were sober were to remember that talk as a faultless example of handling under adverse conditions. To begin with, Graham Malett hadn’t even silence to speak in. Shouts and drunken laughter interrupted the shifty apprehension of those still able to recognize him. Only, as the speaker went on, his voice deepening in force and anger, these died away, and he spoke into absolute quiet.

He began by telling them, dispassionately, that all that had happened that night would be reported to Lymond when he came back. They knew what that meant. They had no reason to complain. A supremely trained force such as theirs could neither operate successfully nor defend itself against others unless it accepted the severest standards of authority within itself. It seemed to him, said Gabriel, looking at the ruined tables, the stained and stinking floor, the rucked and spattered tapestries and the crooked flares, that like common soldiers they had gone about their work that day, content to grumble under orders, without any thought of the purpose behind it.

‘You,’ said Gabriel quietly, ‘are the many blades of the fine instrument we call St Mary’s. Called into being a year ago, a bodiless force, a secular force, no more than an idea in your leader’s mind, it has now become a company worthy of renown throughout Christendom.’ He described, in the waiting silence, some of the things they
had done: their services to the countryside; those actions where they had succeeded best. He made no mention of their failures but stressed Lymond’s name, over and over again, as the man to whose vision and ability they would owe their great future.

It was the fault of no one, said Gabriel at length, that the Queen Mother had found it necessary to demand proof of their competence and their integrity. They possessed both. For a month, no longer, unless the work they had done together was to be wrecked, they must be seen to possess both. They must do exemplary work and lead exemplary lives and regard it, if they must, as penitence for past misdemeanours. ‘No one,’ said Gabriel, smiling a little at last, ‘is proposing to ask you to continue so unnaturally when your probation is over. Men who trade in danger and hardship find it less easy than others to resist sin, or I have found it so, and I accept it. I only suggest, for the sake of your own peace hereafter, that when you go with the Queen Mother’s army to France, you carry your sins, as you do to me, to someone you can trust, who will ease you of them. I would wish to think of you as gay and gallant and light-hearted as you should be now, with all these toys, these childish excesses, left behind.’

‘But you will be with us!’ said des Roches; and his startled words, unintentionally clear, rang through the hall.

Graham Malett looked down. ‘I—shall not be with you in France,’ he said gently. ‘Or afterwards. I am leaving St Mary’s.’

There was a surge of motion. Afterwards, Plummer, watching squint-eyed, remembered it as the breaking of a long, sullen roller, pouring ashore, to stub all its length on a reef. Gabriel stilled the commotion with one hand. ‘I know. St Mary’s has become a part of my life as it is of yours, and it is hard to remember that I promised myself to come only while I could help, and to leave it then to the man whose creation it is. I have taken vows. Thanks to you all—to your leader especially—I am fitter than I have ever been to keep them. I hope, one day, to lead the crusade my Faith is awaiting. In the meantime.…’