The Disorderly Knights (48 page)

‘Why? For Fridays?’ said Jerott nastily, and strode away. She had shouted at him—that delicate child, bred in the cloister. Gabriel had been wrong to trust the force of his faith. He, a man and a knight could stand up to this worldly professionalism. Joleta might not.

His irritation increased when, setting off with the toiling ox-carts for St Mary’s, he observed that the gallant surgeon had been soothing his ruffled vanity with something out of the apothecary’s bottle, and was strikingly gay. In the men’s hearing Lymond said nothing, but the look on his face promised trouble when they got in: intoxication was one of the few cardinal sins at St Mary’s and they had only had trouble once before, with Adam Blacklock when his leg was giving him pain.

Alec Guthrie, another man of moderate intake, dropped back from the head of the column to mention caustically that it had enlivened their tedious work to observe one of their leaders returning
from Boghall castle drunk, and the other fresh from a fight with some woman. This was by deduction, obviously, and Joleta’s name was not mentioned, Jerott noted, feeling ill.

Anyone but Guthrie would have had his head snapped off. Lymond instead said briefly, ‘You may leave Bell to me. The other issue was unavoidable. I haven’t spent time and thought on building a reputable leadership in order to waste it at will.’

‘The men, you appreciate, will want their indulgences too,’ said the humanist drily.

‘Why?’ said Jerott. ‘They’re soldiers, not animals.’

‘They can have them, when the time comes,’ Lymond said. The backs of his hands were ripped with Joleta’s fingernails, and the thin weal at his cheekbone was emitting a little blood. Brushing it with his folded handkerchief, ‘Being men, and not monks,’ he added, to Jerott.

‘
A holy weapon
,’ thought Jerott with contempt, and remembered all of a sudden why he had gone to Boghall at all. ‘And will Tommy Wishart get special concessions?’ he inquired. ‘For services rendered?’

Lymond put away his handkerchief and changed his grip on the reins. ‘You recognized him.’

‘Yes. Did you have someone following de Seurre and des Roches as well?’ said Jerott sarcastically. ‘What happened if one of us promised to join you and didn’t come? Did he get his throat slit? Or was he to be persuaded by the charms of Tosh’s discourse?’

‘My dear man,’ said Lymond, ‘he was keeping the numbers down. If we hadn’t taken precautions the whole of the noble Order of St John would be disporting itself at St Mary’s under the delusion that it was earning merit by converting us to the Cross. As it is, another half dozen are due any day. Alec, now you’ve kept us right, I’d be grateful if you would see if the head of the column knows what the hell it’s doing without you. Jerott, it won’t help us in an ambush if the rearguard is agonizing silently over Joleta’s jeopardized soul. Forget the brat. Remember, we’re common, coarse fighting-men, not a heavenly host in our shifts.’

The careless words set Jerott’s teeth on edge at the time: they rankled still as he rode at Lymond’s back into the courtyard of St Mary’s, alive as a meat-market with the disorder of a big and vigorous camp.

On the wide steps a man awaited them diffidently, tall, quiet and badly dressed, but with authority in his stillness alone. As they got closer he began to move down the stairs and they saw clearly the clear-skinned, big-featured face, the good hands, the bare golden head. His eyes, lit with pleasure, rested on Francis Crawford alone. It was Sir Graham Reid Malett.

Overcome, Randy Bell vomited.

‘Oh God, quite,’ said Lymond. ‘Christendom has caught up with us. My mistake. We
are
a heavenly host in our shifts.’ And he rode forward without haste and dismounted, Joleta’s fingermarks plain on his skin.

V
T
he
H
and of
G
abriel

(
St Mary’s and Djerba, 1551/2
)

T
HE
pressure of Gabriel’s hand on his shoulder that first evening at St Mary’s while Sir Graham introduced his small personal staff and humbly sought a night’s rest on his way north to Joleta merely aggravated Jerott Blyth’s uneasy conscience. But Francis Crawford’s greeting, he noticed, was amicable in its astringent fashion; though Lymond listened without comment to Gabriel’s generous praise of St Mary’s and, next day, to his wholehearted amazement as he walked through the encampment and yards.

They all knew—but from a dogged obstinacy, a superstition even, would not admit it—that in a few weeks they had reached a standard that promised something exceptional. To hear it said, now, by an acknowledged master like Gabriel, was wine in the desert. Days and nights of unpleasantly hard work lay behind them with so far no break, and it was wonderfully good to relax that day in civilized company: to work for once in short spells in the neighbourhood and come back for meals; to see Blacklock, a board in one grimy hand, sketching the visitor as they both talked; to watch Tait, silent normally about his vast knowledge of Europe, exchanging stories about eating-shops in Algiers; to hear Gabriel greet Fergie Hoddim of the Laigh and laugh with him over lawyer’s gossip.

Later, Lancelot Plummer the architect, precise, fastidious, sarcastic and the best engineer in Europe, was the man who helped Gabriel lovingly erect his portable altar, with Lymond’s less than rhapsodical sanction, and was the first to kneel there. Alec Guthrie, an interested observer, raised his eyebrows above the bowed heads of the knights, of Plummer, of Randy Bell, flushed on his knees, and of Adam Blacklock, lurking hesitantly on the fringe. And even Guthrie’s sharp eyes narrowed when, forsaking Latin, Graham Malett addressed his Maker and his audience simply, in the soft Scots of his home. ‘Thou art my hope, Lord Jehovah; my confidence fra my bairnhood.… Look down on these Thy poor sinners, and grant us Thy grace.…’

Lymond also was there, watching. Jerott, lifting his head, disconcertingly found himself under that cold stare, and saw it move then to Plummer and to Randy Bell, where it rested awhile. Comparing, no doubt, his morals and his piety, thought Jerott bitterly. They would all doubtless find themselves tomorrow with the filthiest assignment in the camp.

They got it sooner than that, although not through any agency of Francis Crawford’s. Before the service was over, a runner had burst in gasping to tell Lymond that the siege engine, the loved object of Plummer’s and Bell’s afternoon work, had outmanoeuvred its blocks and run downhill into Effie Harperfield’s farm, killing a boy in the byre and marooning the widow Harperfield and four children in her own back room.

They were all on their feet in the little chapel. ‘I don’t believe it!’ said Plummer sharply. The tower and drawbridge, of heavy timber, was his personal triumph, and Jerott, who had worked with Bell on the job, knew how painstaking he had been.

By then Lymond was issuing orders, without wasting time on the cause; that would come later. At the same time Gabriel, hand on his arm, said quickly, ‘Francis, will you allow me? De Seurre and Jerott and I have done a lot of this. We’ll have it levered erect before your untrained men could manage.’

This was true. All the men of the Order were familiar with siege work. At St Mary’s their mechanical training had only begun. And six men expert in leverage could save lives quicker than twenty unskilled. Lymond said briefly, ‘Take over. It’s yours.…’ and in a moment, Plummer leading and Lymond and Graham Malett together behind, the members of the Order at St Mary’s were making over the small hills towards the Widow Harperfield’s farm, with the remaining officers, Abernethy, the carpenters and two smiths and their tools, and twelve picked men racing after.

It was a brief ride. As they streamed downhill in a sunlit river of leaves they could see the splintered skeleton of the tower above the thatch and rowan trees of the farm, while the hens flapped and screeched still and Thomas Wishart, who had made the discovery, reposed in an unlikely attitude, half in and half out of the roof, telling long Aberdeen jokes to the four Harperfield children stuck below. The byre was a rickle of stones, with an uneven heap lying beside it, its face veiled by a cloak.

The machine was erected, braced, and wheeled to flat ground inside twenty minutes. The orders came in a clear, steady flow in Gabriel’s magnificent voice, pausing only now and then in deference to Plummer or to Lymond before making more demands on his men. The roof and chimney, properly strengthened, held firm and secure as inch by inch the great tower shifted, its swinging drawbridge
safely strapped, its spine braced by iron. And as the hole was gradually cleared, Tosh swung his agile body and dropped, light on his acrobat’s feet, to where the crying children crouched and lifted them to safety one by one, chaffing Effie Harperfield the while about the great new mansion she would be able to get off St Mary’s in restitution.

Then at last, Gabriel was able to stand erect, the sweat running over his skin, and say breathlessly, ‘It’s safe now. Heavens, I’m tired. Francis, you’ll never find a better set of men. I’ve worked them like dogs without even remembering that they’re still on intensive training.… Can I on their behalf beg a break? I know you would intend to give them one soon.… I really doubt if they can go on without one after that.’

‘You look exhausted,’ said Jerott. ‘Francis, he can’t ride on tonight.’

‘Old age,’ said Gabriel. ‘It’s my second adventure in two days, in fact. On my first night at Flaw Valleys the kitchen chimney caught fire and then the room above; and Mistress Somerville, who appears as a rule to be most entertainingly level-headed, became extraordinarily upset at the idea of damage to her precious music room and we had to mobilize the countryside. Which reminds me, Francis. Her daughter Philippa is no friend of yours.’

‘I know,’ said Lymond. With the rest, they were walking to their horses. The Harperfields, with Tosh, had long since been taken to neighbours and the November moon was coming up in the dusk, smoky red and vast as a city.

‘Then you know your own business best,’ said Gabriel mildly. ‘But I ought to tell you that she has some silly plan to shake your dignity. I don’t know what it is and I’m not even supposed to know it’s aimed at you. But my advice would be to give her a chance to forget you. She will, in time.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ said Lymond. ‘You will, of course, stay as long as you wish after your magnificent endeavours, unless the household staff demand a holiday too.’

‘You’re going to declare a rest period?’ asked Jerott. Leisure, with Gabriel there, seemed too good to be true.

‘Rumour being what it is, I imagine it will have declared itself by now,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes. We shall take three days from our labours to relax. Provided Sir Graham understands that by midday tomorrow St Mary’s will be empty and all the men at arms and half the officers whoring in Peebles.’

In the half-dark you could guess at Gabriel’s smile. ‘Do you think I don’t know human nature?’ he said. ‘They are bound by no vows. But as they learn to respect you, they will do as you do.’

‘That’s what we’re all afraid of,’ said Jerott; and there was a ripple
of laughter and a flash of amusement, he saw, from Lymond himself. But he had not meant to be as funny as that.

*

The following day, Gabriel left. Before he went, he sought out Francis Crawford and asked him, as a young lance might do, if he might later return to St Mary’s and join his command.

The interview, by Gabriel’s own contrivance, was private; but by some alchemy, on that misty morning, as they buckled on their cuirasses for the day’s work, every officer at St Mary’s knew of it, and speculated on what Lymond would say. And Jerott, for one, promised himself that if Francis Crawford’s response was to humiliate Gabriel, he, Jerott, would walk out forthwith.

For what else remained for Graham Malett to do? His self-appointed task in Europe was done: Malta was a closed door. From the Knight of St John who had brought the Queen Dowager from France, Jerott already knew that the French Ambassador to Turkey had been vindicated by the efforts in Malta of de Villegagnon, though they had learned from Gabriel that a bitter struggle went on still for the life of the Marshal de Vallier, who had been thrown, a sick man, into the rock dungeon of St Angelo, and whose ‘confession’ under torture to treachery had been sent off to France. Rumours of bribery, of false trials and serpentine deceit by the Grand Master de Homedès were almost certainly true.

So without resources of money and land, his own Scottish birthplace destroyed, and too proud to hire his sword, as de Villegagnon and the Strozzis had done, to a foreign command, Graham Malett had come to his homeland. Torphichen Priory, for more than four hundred years the Order’s centre in Scotland, would give him shelter but he could not strain Sandilands’ kindness too far. As it was, were it known Sir James was on friendly terms with a knight called to justice, he would not remain Preceptor of Torphichen for long.

As they dressed, Fergie Hoddim and Tait and Blacklock speculated fiercely on Gabriel’s reasons for selling his services to an obscure, half-trained corps such as St Mary’s. And when presently they moved chatting into the hall and found there Sir Graham Malett, one booted foot on the hearth, waiting in idle talk with Lymond for a chance to depart, they paused, each trying without being obvious to read two unreadable faces.

Then Gabriel, his guinea-gold hair blazing in the firelight, looked smiling at Lymond, and Francis Crawford said pleasantly, ‘Who’s holding the wagers? Fergie? Then note, Fergie, that we are to be joined presently here at St Mary’s by that well-known servant of Christ’s poor, Sir Graham Malett. As the saying has it, if the Gods
have woolly feet, they also have arms of iron. Sir Graham is one of the most ironic. I am delighted that he is coming and I wish only to point out that the Order is not taking over this army, nor is this army taking over the Order. It is merely, as always, following my command.’