The Disorderly Knights (43 page)

Rarely, outside their own family, had a delicate situation been stripped to the bone, in the Crawfords’ experience, by the supposedly oblivious victim. Never, in anyone’s experience, had the protagonist made to look foolish been Lymond.

The reflex action was a foregone conclusion. Regardless of Sybilla’s cry, the duenna’s sudden, shocked protest, despite Richard’s ejaculation or Will Scott’s laughter or Jerott Blyth’s angry clenched fists, Lymond pulled the girl to him in one hard, capable movement. ‘But I,’ said Lymond, ‘am one of the new apostles, seeking nothing but voluptuousness and human pleasures, and abusing the world.…’

Her eyes closed as he brought his mouth down on hers. Her lips, a little apart, showed her sparkling teeth; her lashes were amber, and the long, apricot hair, streaming back to the floor, was born at her temples in powderings of golden down.

Francis Crawford drew a little breath, just before his lips touched hers, his eyes on that ineffable, heart-stopping face; then straightening, he opened his hands.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I’m sorry. It’s like kissing a chapel. Less a mouth, you might say, than a hole for the bell-rope. Sir Graham is right. I forego my option.’ And, released from his hands and his attention in the same staggering moment, Joleta sat on the floor.

‘
Francis!
’ said Lord Culter hoarsely. Will Scott choked. And while Mariotta, her eyes round, looked from the dumbstruck governess to the flushed and furious Jerott and back, Sybilla Lady Culter, with erect hauteur, took the matter in hand.

‘Madame Donati, I apologize. Francis, I shall speak to you later. Joleta, you can hardly be surprised at what has happened. If you had asked me, I could have told you, without putting yourself to the trouble of experiment, that no one, saint or sinner, is likely to seduce Francis against his will. Unfortunately.’

And as Madame Donati, monumental in anger, removed a white-faced and thoroughly shaken Joleta, Jerott Blyth, opening a grim conversation with Will Scott, found one satisfaction in the cheap little scene. Lymond, occupied in sitting staring at the floor, had an unpleasant appointment with the mistress of Midculter to match any he had made himself that day.

The Crawfords on the other hand were hugging a different discovery, equally pleasing. The simple village maiden was not about to fall under the young master’s spell. ‘And vice versa,’ as Richard afterwards said. ‘Vice, incredibly, versa.’

Later that night, having won his way, with some trouble, back into his family’s good graces, Lymond answered some of their questions about Malta. And having listened, ‘Well, they must be gey poor fighters, or ye were unco late with your warning,’ said Buccleuch the Younger argumentatively. ‘For they lost Gozo and Tripoli, whether it was the French knights’ fault as they say or not.’

‘They lost them because His Eminence the Grand Master is a two-faced bastard,’ said Lymond. ‘And having spent all the Order’s money on himself and his nephews, he can’t afford to fortify the Order’s possessions as he should.’

‘Depose him,’ said Will Scott, astonished.

‘The Grand Master’s holy office terminates with his life.’

‘And can nobody think of an answer to that?’ said Will Scott.

‘Riots, dry cuffs and straiks among God’s priestly servitors, and when the dust settles, the French are in charge?’ said Lymond. ‘Charles would attack them, the Pope would spurn them, and four hundred years of chivalry would go for a groat. And don’t tell me either there are murderers
and
murderers. If Juan de Homedès gets so much as a stuffed nose, heads will roll for it just now.’

Sybilla thought, And so you leave Malta at the mercy of this greedy old man and his retinue. That isn’t like you, my boy. Presumably Francis, like Gabriel, knew too much about what had happened at Tripoli to be allowed to stay profitably on Malta. She wondered what part Francis had played in Gabriel’s saintly retreat. Gabriel, they said, was a spell-binder … although it sounded, from Joleta’s remarks, as if her son had proved more spell-resistant than Graham Malett had expected … which was a pity. She had no yearning to see Francis a monk—an involuntary smile crossed her face at the thought—but she believed him altogether too resistant to altogether too much.

Will Scott, dear, single-minded Will, said bluntly, ‘Then what’s Graham Malett going to do? What are you going to do, Francis?’

‘Sir Graham, I understand, is coming back merely to see his sister and rest. I,’ said Lymond, closing the lid of the spinet and sitting down again suddenly, ‘am going to settle down at St Mary’s and raise a little army.’

‘A little army of what?’ said Richard ironically, but his eyes were very wary indeed.

‘Of masters in the art of war,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Of trained engineers and pioneers and masters of ordnance. Sappers, billmen, pikemen, arquebusiers, strategists with horse and with foot. A virtuous little warband, highly trained and highly mobile, and nine-tenths of it officers.’

Once Lymond, with Will Scott at his side, had led a roving company in southern Scotland. Then there had been sixty of them, broken
men and outlawed for the most part, because Lymond himself was outside the law. A camp such as Lymond now contemplated, on the other hand, could turn itself in two weeks of easy recruiting into an international force.

There was a respectful silence, broken by Lord Culter’s agreeable voice. ‘How exciting,’ he said. ‘And are we witnessing the foundation of the Order of St Francis, or is the Queen Dowager getting her standing army at last?’

‘Not at all. You are witnessing the younger branch of the family being severely practical,’ said Lymond, his blue eyes guileless in his tanned face. ‘Brute force is the most saleable commodity in Europe today. In six months mine shall be in the market, washed, sorted and trimmed, and priced accordingly.’

‘Strictly mercenary?’ said Will Scott thoughtfully. ‘My God, you’ll be playing with fire.’

‘No principles and no philosophy. For financial gain only,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘This year, I am travelling light.’ And removing his gaze from his mother’s frankly owlish regard, ‘Now, dear Antony of Padua inform me, why should Mariotta be lugging about the Martinmas hog?’

For the door had opened on his sister-in-law, her black hair pulled curling out of its caul round her radiant face, and in her arms an animated bolster in a white, cock-eyed cap whose fat hand was wound throttlingly into its mother’s agates and pearls. Its face was a pneumatic version of Mariotta’s, but bountifully male.

Lymond, still talking, rose and went over. ‘Don’t tell me: the Master of Culter?’ And he took the baby from her as he might have lifted a piglet, securely and casually, leaving her empty-handed, her gaze on Sybilla. The baby laughed and drooled, two milk-teeth shining in the wet. Lymond examined it, and it chuckled again. ‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Born into this rout of robbers and hurly-burly of Lanarkshire vagabonds, you’d damned well better learn to spit or to giggle, or both.’

Until this child was born, the Master of Culter had been his own title. Mariotta did not forget: in four years she had matured. ‘Thank you, M. le Comte,’ she said gravely; and smiling, he threw the child in the air and returned it, fizzing with aerated mirth. Its eyes, coins of dark-blue iris, rolled round to follow him and Sybilla, felled by an unlooked-for discovery about this, her intellectual son, sat grinning back at a view of the door which was uncommonly blurred.

III
T
he Conscience of
P
hilippa

(
London, October/November 1551
)

T
HE
day after Tom Erskine’s death, Philippa Somerville finally broke down, and was given a kindly escort home to Flaw Valleys.

The occasion was the first news of Joleta’s impetuous stand against Lymond’s soldiers and the sequel, willing or not, in Lymond’s arms. On hearing of it Philippa burst into ungainly tears and announced, to any who could hear her, that if she also had had a pistol she would have taken care to shoot Francis Crawford dead.

Within two days, Flaw Valleys received her. Kate Somerville, about to leave for London on an errand of mercy of her own, took a quick look at her daughter’s angular face and decided, with a brief prayer, to set out as planned and to take Philippa with her.

London, in an armed turmoil since the Earl of Warwick had seized full power and flung the King’s uncle and Protector into the Tower, was not the obvious place, it had to be said, for a holiday. But her husband, had he lived, would have been there, out of pure concern for the safety of the boy-King he had served, and out of an exasperated loyalty to Grey of Wilton, his lordly general in the north, now sharing the Protector’s captivity.

A nondescript Northumberland widow, Kate could do nothing to help the King or the thirteenth Baron of Wilton, but it seemed to her that Lady Wilton might be glad of a friendly Somerville at hand.

So Kate stayed in London at the Somerville house, but took the first chance of sending Philippa out of the city to Gideon’s brother, an ageing courtier with a toehold in both camps. Thus, in the last days of October, Philippa Somerville found herself with her elderly nurse Nell staying upriver with her uncle at Hampton Court Palace, where he had, he said, Household business to contract. By no sixth sense was it understood by either Philippa or her mother what shattering results this family visit might have.

To begin with, it seemed to Philippa mournfully pleasant, wandering over the rain-drenched lawns and through the late Cardinal Wolsey’s big, beautiful palace, vacant but for the scattered permanent
staff and the small State offices, such as her uncle’s, in sporadic use.

Uncle Somerville had little to say. He was busy, Philippa suspected with State business of his own, better transacted away from prying eyes in London. Visitors came and went in the back parlour of his house in the palace grounds, with its view of the smoothly flowing yellow Thames, while Philippa sat and read in the front.

Only once was he unexpectedly put out: when news came from the palace that the Queen Dowager of Scotland had landed on her way home from France, and was to break her journey at Hampton Court on her way to Westminster to be received by the King. Then Anthony Somerville, a high-coloured, placid man with thick, silvery hair, had asked one or two sharp questions, had appeared reasonably pleased with the answers, and had given orders for the royal boatmen, without livery, to be ready the following day to take a passenger up-river to London Port. The Queen Dowager, it appeared, was not due at the palace for four days, but Uncle Somerville was not taking any chances.

Philippa would not have been human, and certainly would not have been thirteen, if she had not taken good care next day to catch a glimpse of Uncle Somerville’s private visitor. She saw him arrive about midday, after dinner, a tall spare man with a big nose and hollow cheeks exposing the muscular promontory of mouth and chin.

She knew then why Uncle Somerville had no wish that the Scottish court and this gentleman should meet. This was George Paris, secret agent between Ireland and France, and negotiator for those Irish lords who, paying lip-service to England, had never lost hope of persuading the King of France to help them overthrow English rule. She had met him once on a Scottish visit to Midculter: he had come straight from the Queen Dowager, whose fondest wish was to see France reign over Ireland as well. It would interest the Queen Dowager, now, to see George Paris, with a price on his head, supposedly sought high and low by the English Government as an enemy and a spy, in safe and secret conclave with an official of the English King’s entourage. For George Paris was a double agent, it seemed.

Philippa wished, suddenly, that she had not witnessed the visit. Since the war had ended, she had given her friendships, as Kate had, on both sides of the Border without stint. She would take the problem, when she got back, to Kate.

But she had to take her own decision sooner than that. Hardly had her uncle and the man Paris launched into their business than she had a guest of her own.

For an instant, as her visitor paused on the threshold, Philippa thought it was Francis Crawford come to plague her. Then she saw
that this was a bigger man, splendidly built, with hair of a brighter yellow and clothes which were simply cheap without Lymond’s expensive restraint. The face smiling at her was pink and pure-skinned, the eyes clear. Philippa, now thoroughly alarmed for a different reason, realized that confronting her was Sir Graham Reid Malett, Knight of the Order of St John, whose letters to her mother she had often read, sending his respects and his thanks for the hospitality Kate had given to his sister Joleta. And here he was, come to call on Joleta’s young friend.

He looked much older than Joleta, but the family likeness was very marked. Stammering (heavens, how Kate would laugh!) Philippa introduced Nell and apologized for her uncle’s delay. He neither blessed her nor became nauseatingly avuncular. Instead he said cheerfully, ‘That girl’s right: there’s the essence of Kate Somerville in you. You don’t deserve to be so lucky,’ and she wondered if Joleta had reported so flatteringly of her mother, or if Graham Malett knew the Border hearsay of the Somervilles. His home, after all, had not been so far away long ago. Then he went on to chat easily about his journey from France in the Queen Dowager’s ships and about his coming reunion with his sister, and she began to see how Joleta, whose quick brain held nothing sacred, could still worship him; and whence she derived some of her startling appeal.

Meanwhile, Philippa herself, making dutiful conversation, was in the grip of a notion. Cumbered with rather less than the usual count of desperate sins, she had been to confession all her life as a matter of course. Since returning from Scotland she had not visited church and Uncle Somerville, fortunately, hadn’t noticed.

The trouble was, a dying man had confided a message to her and she had not conveyed it. Nor had she any intention of doing so. Philippa looked at Gabriel’s calm face and thought that he at least, knowing what Lymond was, would absolve her from placing this weapon in Lymond’s hands.