The Disorderly Knights (83 page)

‘About Malta?’ said Jerott baldly. ‘Sir Graham said Lymond betrayed us on Malta.’

‘Did he? But you would expect him to, would you not? My experience,’ said the geographer, ‘was different, and no doubt so was yours. But no. This dealt with the woman, Oonagh O’Dwyer.’

‘They say she was O’Connor’s wife,’ said Jerott quickly. From Sybilla’s face, it was clear that the fate of Oonagh O’Dwyer was no secret.

‘I do not know. I should regard that, if I were taken to task, as a small misapprehension on O’Connor’s part,’ said de Nicolay easily. ‘But I meant something other. They say she did not die.’

‘She drowned!’ said Jerott. ‘When Lymond.… When Francis was forced to swim away from her.’

‘I am glad that you accept his story,’ said the cosmographer, his smile glimmering about the mouth. ‘It is a true one, I am sure. But I am told that she did not drown, though he was intended to think so, but was most carefully rescued by Dragut Rais, and tended in his harem after the knights’ ships had gone.’

‘Why?’ said Sybilla bluntly, her face white, her breathing painfully short.

De Nicolay raised his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Perhaps he was paid. But it is true. I have met someone who saw her, months after she was said to have died. A white woman, an Irishwoman, in Africa could not long, you may imagine, be hidden. And especially not a white woman with a child.’

There was a shade of deprecation in the voice: a hint perhaps deliberate which had already put Jerott on his guard. But Sybilla, silent for a single, blocked moment, simply said, brightly, ‘Dear me. Of course. The offspring of the bereft Mr O’Connor. So she was pregnant when she was captured, was she? Poor child.’

Nicolas de Nicolay hesitated.

‘Well?’ said Sybilla, and her lip suddenly trembled.

‘I am told,’ de Nicolay went on, his exuberance absent; his voice very flat, ‘that the child, a son, has none of Cormac O’Connor’s size or girth, or his or Oonagh’s black hair. I am told that it is the fairest ever seen in or out of Africa, with blue eyes and hair pale as flax. She will not say who the father is, so it has been called Khaireddin.’

In the long, ensuing silence, neither man looked at Sybilla. Then, ‘Does Francis know?’ said the Dowager, clear-voiced and dogged, with the tearstains spreading dark on her dress.

‘No, ma’am,’ said de Nicolay shortly. ‘The young man, I believe, has anxieties enough. I had no intention when I came to Scotland of telling him, or informing you. But this I now say. It is nothing if it is not a weapon. Be on your guard. Say nothing. But pray to your
gods, and the gods of the Turks, that Gabriel does not know what we know.’

Soon after that, Alec Guthrie arrived, very wary of Jerott at first, and then exceedingly business-like. He came from Lymond, to whom he had reported when his work at Branxholm was done. They had traced Gabriel’s connexion with the Hot Trodd. The route taken by St Mary’s and by the Scotts in their search for the lost herds had been anything but fortuitous: they had found the men bribed to keep each force, by false clues, on the wrong path. If Adam Blacklock succeeded in his interrupted quest with the Turnbulls, they could prove how the Trodd was planned to take place and fail.

He had further news. A large force of French troops under M. d’Oisel, with artillery and dogs, had arrived at St Mary’s, sequestering the buildings and placing their inmates under detention; and a country-wide search for Francis Crawford had been launched. News of the
Magdalena
, obviously, had reached Falkland. Guthrie had orders to tell Nicolas de Nicolay, and the Chevalier Blyth, if the circumstances were right, that Cormac O’Connor had left for Falkland again. Further, that only Nicolas de Nicolay, on whom no suspicion rested, might return, if he wished, to St Mary’s again. All the others who had been with Lymond the previous day at Boghall were to remain at large, since at St Mary’s their liberty might be curtailed by the Ambassador. Their continuing absence Gabriel also would put down to this reason.

‘Mr Guthrie,’ said Sybilla. ‘Tell me. How did you discover Francis?’

The soldier-lecturer grinned. ‘Forethought, my lady. He drew up a route, just before he left Boghall, and tacked it all into us like soling a floor. A day in this cabin and two days in that cave, two days on the journey, and three in a friendly farm. We all know where he is any day you like to choose, and can report to him, and get our orders. And those who are watching St Mary’s report, too.’

‘How is he?’ said Sybilla with equal composure. ‘I am told he received a thrashing. I am sure he has one or two owing him.’

‘Yes. Well, not one of this order,’ said Guthrie, glancing up at Jerott and de Nicolay. ‘Someone thought they were taking dust from a floor-claith. Ye’ll no can pat him on the back for a week or two. But otherwise he’ll do. He’s food and drink and all the blankets he needs,’ he added kindly, for the Dowager’s benefit. ‘And a purpose that’ll see him through, were he holed like a thurible. I’m afraid, ma’am, a high-handed young despot is what you’ve bred, you and your husband.’

‘I suspected as much,’ said Sybilla. ‘Gaineth me no garland of green, but it ben of withies wrought. Don’t look so nervous, my dear. If I had a woolly shirt and a tin flagon of medicine you could have
them with pleasure, for the amusement of seeing him laugh himself sick. Tell him … I have a new cat.’

‘Is that all?’ said Jerott, standing up uncomfortably. Guthrie was to take him to where Lymond lay.

‘And that George Paris landed at Dumbarton today, I’m told,’ said Sybilla. ‘And means to leave shortly for a lodging in Edinburgh.’

‘So!’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, suddenly vastly interested. ‘The sensible one downstairs and her story fall into place after all. Is this, would you think, one of Gabriel’s final moves?’

‘I hope so,’ said Sybilla coolly, and there was no ambiguity in her meaning at all.

*

This day, in his provident itinerary, Francis Crawford was spending in a daub and wattle shepherd’s hut, deep in the Tweedsmuir hills.

Archie Abernethy, his sun-dried face impassive, was on guard. Passing him, with Alec Guthrie leading the way, Jerott was seized with a desire to be anywhere but here.

The evidence against Graham Malett, his lifelong hero, was overwhelming. He was prepared to believe it with his head, if not yet with his heart. His feeling for Lymond, on the other hand, echoed a little what his own men had felt last night. An illogical resentment that he, with ail his failings, should be the
deus ex machina
to destroy Gabriel’s great name.

To Lymond’s cool brain it was inevitable. He must have set out deliberately to expose Graham Malett a long time ago. He had spared nothing. He had had the hardihood to play the third, vulnerable hand in the last knife-edge game between Joleta, Sir Graham and himself, in the hope that Joleta would be frightened into confession; he had even, with the same mechanical single-mindedness, offered himself as whipping-boy to induce Gabriel to give full rein to his passions.

So he had come to the place where Graham Malett, finding both Lymond and Joleta his sister troublesome, had found a witty solution at the top of the steps to St Mary’s.

Again, it was logical. It was logical that Lymond had sensibly saved his own life at the expense of the girl’s. By Joleta’s orders, the old woman Trotty had been killed. He knew, from Sybilla’s quiet account, of what else Gabriel’s sister had done. She was wild and cruel and corrupt. By taking that murderous thrust in his own body, Lymond would have done only what Gabriel coolly hoped he would do. Jerott could admire his good sense, but he did not particularly want to meet him now or indeed ever again.

He had not been announced. So, hesitating on the threshold and peering into the murky interior, Jerott heard Lymond say in his ordinary voice, ‘Come in, Alec. I regret the redolent gloom; the sheep-stank had a little more style about it. But Archie stamps on my fingers if I venture outside … 
Jerott!
’

He stopped speaking for a moment. Moving forward, angrily aware that Guthrie had found something unexpected to do outside, Jerott distinguished a candle guttering in the near corner of the windowless cabin. Papers covered the makeshift table on which it stood, with Lymond’s hands spread upon them, full in the light of the blown flame. His face, in the reflected glow, was to Jerott’s dazzled eyes merely a pale mask of inquiry, its framework and cavities engraved in depth by the light. Then he said, unexpectedly, ‘I am deeply sorry.’

Jerott Blyth let the hide door fall to behind him, and moved farther in. ‘Madame Donati has told us everything she knows about Sir Graham,’ he said, ‘But the groom who killed Trotty Luckup is dead. Your brother thinks he can find out who did it.’

Lymond looked down, and picking up the pen he had been using, balanced it thoughtfully between his two forefingers. He said, without looking up, ‘And you believe Evangelista Donati? She was devoted to Joleta, remember.’

‘She couldn’t have invented …’ Jerott’s voice failed him. ‘I believed her,’ he said shortly. ‘I have heard also about the Hot Trodd. And there are other … discrepancies.’ He paused. ‘He has set mastiffs after you.’

‘Yes.’ Lymond laid down the pen with care. ‘At Martinmas I kill my swine, and at Christmas I drink red wine. An act of rather less than Christian charity. But war on the infidel is the Order’s prime rule, isn’t it, Jerott?’

‘So also is chastity,’ said Jerott, his strong voice blanched still with distress. He took a deep breath and added, ‘I have come to tell you that I am rejoining Sir Graham at St Mary’s.’

Under the candle flame, brightening as the hills outside dimmed towards night, Lymond’s hands moved slowly together and united, with great care. When he looked up his underlit lashes starred his face with spiked shadow, like a doll’s. ‘No, Jerott,’ he said. ‘Some of us might deceive Gabriel; but you, never.’

From his rare advantage of height, Jerott Blyth stared down at the seated man. ‘Yes, of course, that’s what you would think,’ he said. ‘That I was proposing to spy for you.’

The hands in the candlelight lay still. Lymond said, ‘Surely there are only two intelligent reasons for returning to Gabriel now. One is to spy for me. The other is to betray me. I assumed you would hardly visit me in the latter case to tell me so.’

Jerott Blyth’s black brows were straight above his shadowed eyes, and his lips pressed together before he answered at last. ‘My reason is not an intelligent one. I have seen what intelligence can do.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the pleasant voice. ‘My heart mourneth sore of the death of her; for she was a passing fair lady, and a young. Also a cold-blooded little trollop. Desert me, Chevalier, because I dodged, but for God’s sake don’t feel called upon to wash the stains from the murderer’s hand.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Jerott Blyth, ‘I am called upon to care for Graham Malett’s impaired soul, not to drive him to further excesses.’ With an effort, he made his voice level. ‘I shall give him no information, naturally, about your whereabouts or plans. And I shall have the hunt for you stopped.’

‘In the teeth of the whole bloody French army, M. l’Ambassadeur du Roi d’Oisel included? Don’t be a raving fool, Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s out of Gabriel’s hands now, as he meant it to be. Use your brain. This isn’t a giant strayed. It’s a clever and powerful man who can find pleasure in a vast, despotic scheme like this and work towards it secretly for years if necessary. The Order taught him to kill his infidel, and by heaven, he’s using the knowledge on every one of us standing in his way. I’ve great respect for the power of prayer to dislodge devils, but in this instance, I’d prefer to use a hundred pounds or so of round stone shot, at close quarters.’

‘As St Mary’s teaches,’ said Jerott. ‘Really, there isn’t much to choose between you, is there?’ His dark eyes rested on the mess of papers on the bright table. ‘He will hang when you have your evidence, without a thought for all that is great in him. You would have killed him yourself, I know well, except that it wasn’t convenient to martyr him. You didn’t see him in Malta in the great days, preaching, fighting.… His name rang round the Mediterranean.’

‘Before he gave up hope of deposing the Grand Master. So,’ said Lymond, and unclasping his hands, he lifted the table away with a movement of unexpected violence, and got up. ‘As soon as you begin to lead him into the paths of righteousness, he will do one of two things. He will kill you, because of what you obviously know, or he will promptly become converted for exactly as long as it suits him to achieve his object. Either way your respective souls are going to emerge a little dog-eared. You are risking innocent lives to indulge in a quite hopeless piece of missionary work.’

There was no heat in the hut. As the shadows gathered and the candle began to flicker low, Jerott saw his opponent only as a lit shirt-sleeve and long, smooth line of dark hose, leaning back against the tough mud wall, his hands tucked into his trunk-band. Breathing hard, his face flushed, Jerott did not feel the cold. He said, ‘Have you counted how many have lost their lives since
you
took the great
matter of Graham Malett in solitary hand? He accused you of pushing Joleta back into the gutter. What chance have you given him?’ His voice shaking, Jerott said, ‘He might have been entrusted to the wisest hands in the Order to save. Now I—
I
have to.… His only hope is in me.
Do you think this is easy?
’

Head bent, Lymond was studying the invisible floor at his feet. After a moment, he said, ‘It is very sad; but no one with theological training is ever going to believe that nine times out of ten, what is best for one’s character is the primrose path, not the thicket of thorns. You realize, of course, that knight or not, he will die in the end for what he has done. And that if he is to die shriven, you have a week or two only in which to make your conversion. I shall have all the proof I need by then; more than he can possibly refute.’

He looked up suddenly. ‘Do you mean him to pay for his crimes, Jerott? Or do you plan to take him south, where he may see the light of repentance in prayerful peace, and return one day to illumine your Order? You are still under his spell, aren’t you? A man no worse, you may say, than others who rule today, who stops at nothing to achieve power and has all the virtues of courage and leadership and a wide-ranging mind. But a man, too, who could sway nations with the power of his voice and the religious fervour he can inspire. My God, Jerott: think of the damage a good and simple man can do under these terms. What do you suppose an evil and most damnably intelligent one would do? No,
mon Chevalier
,’ said Lymond, speaking clearly and slowly. ‘You are not going back to Graham Malett now, or at any other time.’