The Disorderly Knights (58 page)

The analysis of their late action, or inaction as Gabriel ruefully put it, probably lasted less than an hour. During it, every aspect of their failure was thrashed out except one: the absence of leadership. Instead, Graham Malett took on himself all the blame for the central breakdown in the action: the decision to allow the Kerrs to search the neighbourhood of the Turnbull land for their cattle unguarded.

The others wouldn’t have it. ‘No.’ Alec Guthrie, small eyes swollen with sleeplessness, turned his grating voice on Lymond. ‘Sir Graham was against it. The rest of us persuaded him and he yielded to a majority judgement on your orders. There lay the essence of the mistake.’

Graham Malett’s own voice cut in quietly. ‘I disagree. As Mr Crawford once said, we are a council of experts, not a dictatorship. There is no room for a Grand Master here.’

‘Really?’ said Lymond’s cold voice. ‘What do you do on the galleys when a galleass with a thousand Turks aboard sticks her irons on you? Hold a conference first? In the field, one man leads, for good or for bad. In St Mary’s, we confer, as we are doing now. To confuse the two situations is lunacy.’

There was a brief silence. ‘Then I’m afraid neither of us distinguished himself yesterday,’ said Gabriel ruefully. ‘I’m going to abdicate in Jerott’s favour next time you are … away.’

‘It was a pity,’ said Lymond coolly, ‘that you didn’t find the Scotts quickly, and divide your force between them and the Kerrs. The other flaws in the action, it seems to me, were outwith our control. Someone made quite unexpected trouble by paying the Turnbulls to kill and brand all those animals. And the Kerrs had a most unexpected piece of luck in breaking into that ground floor room at the Keep.’

‘They’d batter the locks with hackbuts,’ said Jerott contemptuously. ‘Or the hinges were rusty. It’s an old tower.’

‘They didn’t, and they weren’t,’ said Lymond. ‘They used a key.
Maybe the Nixons keep the key under the doormat. I shouldn’t know. But that was the third unfortunate occurrence, if you could call it that.’

‘What do you mean?’ It was Gabriel’s voice, soft but severe.

‘That someone doesn’t like the Scotts or the Kerrs. I have no idea who—the English, would you say? Or one of their rival families on the Borders? I mention it with diffidence,’ said Lymond, with no diffidence at all in his manner, ‘and at the risk, I am aware, of misunderstanding. But we failed as we did for quite extraordinary reasons, nothing to do with our capabilities. Given the information we had, we acted rightly. I, for one, do not regret anything I have personally done.’

‘Or not done?’ It was Jerott Blyth again, but in an undertone. It did not escape Francis Crawford, who turned his head and smiled. ‘I thought your objections were to my excesses, not my omissions,’ he said drily. ‘Sir Graham, if it seems to you that we have covered all the necessary ground, I don’t think there is much profit in talking longer. Your wound must be causing you pain.’

Sir Graham rose, his face pale under his golden thatch. ‘There are other things that pain me more,’ he said abruptly. ‘You are fortunate in having nothing of which to accuse yourself.’ For a moment he stood, his clear, world-weary gaze on Lymond’s impervious stare; then shut his lips tightly and left.

They all began to get up. ‘
Whatever
do you think he means?’ said Plummer, drifting past, to Lymond’s bent head. Lymond stood, so suddenly that Plummer took a step back. ‘That surveyors there be, that greedily gorge up their covetous guts,’ he said. ‘What was it that you and Tait were so concerned should not be wasted in Nixon’s chapel?’

Plummer’s elegant body became rigid, but although his eyes flickered to Hercules Tait’s and back, he did not flush. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘There was a very fine little Byzantine plaque on the wall, with a fragment of cross and some angels. The poor man had obviously no idea of its beauty—well, you had only to look at the rubbish he put on his plaster elsewhere. Probably stuck it up to cover a hole. But to anyone who knew.… You must take my word for it,’ said Plummer, getting at last into his stride. ‘It would have been sacrilege to let it burn.’

‘I saw it. It was a silver-gilt Staurotheque,’ said Lymond. ‘About four hundred years old. With a figure of Christ enthroned in gold and enamels, and angels confronted. I travel too, sometimes, you know.… You were, I presume, going to present it to your own Church of St Giles?’

‘I—Of course,’ said Plummer slowly. His eyes, heavy with sleeplessness, took on an aggrieved glaze.

‘But it is, of course, the property of Master Nixon, whom we shall in any case have to recompense for having allowed the destruction of his home. Since therefore you feel that the Church would be a more appreciative owner than Master Nixon,’ said Lymond, his voice always pleasant, ‘it only remains for you to recompense Master Nixon with the full value of the Staurotheque. If you and Hercules Tait will give me a bill on your bankers tomorrow, I shall delight in arranging it. And Plummer!’ said Francis Crawford gently as the architect, pink-cheeked, turned away. ‘Remember, theft is theft, whether committed by old man Turnbull or not.’

He saw them shuffle in time from his room, tired men all, not talking much, and watched Salablanca draw back the stools to their places and put away the board and place a light robe, without being asked, in front of the fire. The sunlight, dappled with shadow, shone in through his big window and fell on the bed, a plain one with white linen sheets, aired and turned back, and a cover of fine, soft blue wool. Lymond got up.

The big, soft-footed Moor, dropping what he was doing, came and stood beside him. ‘¿
Quiere Vd comer? ¿Está servido un poquito, poquito
…?’

‘No,’ said Lymond. He said in Spanish, ‘Let me offer you some excellent advice. Never issue reproofs under stress. You say too much. On the other hand’—he turned a blank gaze on the Moor—‘I believe the general discussion passed off well enough. I suppose it did. I have very little recollection of it, but I hope it did … 
¿Cómo está el Señor Scott?
’ he said abruptly.

‘That does not change,’ said the Moor quietly. ‘The Señor will sleep?’

‘I will see him first,’ said Lymond and leaving, walked through to the sick quarters.

Will Scott lay in the big room alone but for Randy Bell, sunk deep in a bedside chair, and Abernethy, cross-legged on the floor. Lymond said at once, ‘Bell, you’re exhausted man, and you can’t do anything. Go and get some sleep,’ and as the doctor, after only a token demur, moved slowly off, Lymond sat himself carefully in his place.

The young laird of Buccleuch had not far now to go. The carroty hair, the orange eyebrows, the sandy lashes, the white stubble of ferocious young beard were all the colour there was on the pillow, and the vigorous frame, reared by the old man at Branxholm to carry on his great name; trained to just deeds and informed by a simple and generous spirit, lay already as still as the Eildons.

But he was breathing yet. Abernethy, his scarred, nut-like face impassive, said, ‘It may take long enough. But he willna wake now.’

‘He might,’ said Lymond. Once Scott had loathed him as some of his captains did still. No, that was an exaggeration. These were
clever, experienced men. They appreciated what St Mary’s was, and he had made them laugh, but they didn’t trust him yet as they trusted Gabriel, for example.… ‘The very devil’s officers,’ said Lymond aloud, and from the shock to his nerves realized how near sleep he had been. He got up and walked slowly up and down the sunlit room.

Scott had more than trusted him, in the end. He had freed Lymond four years ago from his outlawry. And he had been ready to share any adventure, on his wedding-day even. Of his fourth wife, old Buccleuch had nothing but toddlers. And Will’s sons were babies yet. But at least, of course, he had sons.…

Lymond stopped walking. There was a curious white haze in the room, and in his head an ululation, a singing of blood under pressure exactly like, he thought vaguely, a child’s bleak, coughing cry. But there were no infants at St Mary’s.

His sense of balance went quite suddenly then. He was conscious of the two violent blows, first on his shoulder and then on his knee, as his body struck the floor, and even that someone already there at his side had broken his fall. But after that, he knew nothing more.

*

Francis Crawford slept in his own bed until dusk. Put there by Salablanca and Archie, he was not conscious of it at the time, and would have lain longer still had he not been forcibly roused. His first impression indeed was of someone shaking him so violently that his exhausted body rebelled and launched him, half-conscious, into a fit of irrepressible coughing.

An outside agency stopped that for him, at once, with a jug of cold water slapped full in his face. Gasping for breath, Francis Crawford sat up, and with both hands cleared and opened his eyes.

It was night. He was in the loose robe that had been thrown in front of his fire: someone had undressed him. And the face before him, the grim, grey, rough-bearded face with every line a rut and every rut a channel of agony, was the face of Buccleuch.

Becoming very still, Lymond let his hands drop.

‘Asleep, were ye?’ said Will Scott’s father, and laid down the empty jug in his grasp. Placing his hands behind his broad back he continued to stand, surveying the splendid blue bed. ‘Well-drunken too, I see,’ he said after a moment. ‘At least ye fairly reek of a very nice make of liquor. Things going well, are they?’

Lymond did not speak. The robe he was wearing reeked of spirits, and in his face was the question he had lost the right to ask. Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch answered it for him.

‘You won’t know: my son’s dead. They were sorry ye left him so
soon to get at your drink and your slippers, though I’m sure ye deserved them. When he woke, seemingly, they couldna get ye roused tae speil off a kind word or two, just as he died.’

There was a long silence. Then Lymond said, ‘I would have … I didn’t know. They couldn’t have tried.’ He was white.

The grey, matted beard nodded. Buccleuch’s face was covered with a marcasite of fine dust, where he had been riding hard and long against the May wind. ‘His brain was soft a wee, mind. He asked for the Master of Culter, as if ye were his commander; and when they told him ye couldna come, he said you’d be by-ordnar plagued with things to attend to, and we were to tell you never to trouble. But he hoped all the time, they said, that you’d see past it and come.… But that’s no matter. They tell me it was your orders that put him and the rest of them in the castle. There’s just one thing I’ll trouble ye to tell me: which Kerr was it killed him?’

‘
Wat
.…’ said Lymond, and stopped. All the time he had been speaking, Buccleuch’s face had been bathed unheeding in a ceaseless curtain of tears. He was quite unaware of it, it was clear as he plodded on with what he had to say. Nor was the bitterness of his words at all at variance with it. Only Lymond, wordless for once, had to control his own emotion before he could speak. Then he said quietly, ‘I don’t know, Wat. It may not have been a Kerr at all.’

‘Aye.’ The old man was not surprised. ‘It’s your heaven-given job, of course, to see there’s nae prejudice between the two families. Are ye going tae manage it soon, do ye think? So it may not be a Kerr,’ he said, the tears twinkling in his mirthless eyes. ‘There’s a lot of left-handed folk going up and down stairs in that part of the world, I warrant you. It’ll be one of them.’

One could do nothing with that. Lymond left it. He said, ‘Wat: will you let me tell Grizel?’

‘The younger Lady of Buccleuch will know by now,’ said Sir Wat, rising with his new, painful formality. The hapless, unnoticed weeping had stopped. ‘Yon fellow Malett rode to tell her right away, wounded shoulder and all. I got him to say a prayer over the lad first.… He wasn’t working for ye again, was he? Will?’

‘No,’ said Lymond.

‘Oh. I thocht maybe he was, since he took your orders, it seems. Then ye’ll hae no objection if his cousins and I take the body off home?’

‘Wat. Stop it, for God’s sake,’ said Lymond. He swung out of bed beside the old Warden, and grasped the rigid, powerful arms. ‘Another day I’ll tell you what happened. But meantime, don’t believe me indifferent. You could have had my right hand.…’

‘But you had his, instead,’ said Buccleuch.

The two pairs of eyes met, and held. ‘All right,’ said Lymond at last, and dropped his arms. ‘But blame me. Not the Kerrs.’

‘There’s little, it seems, to choose between you,’ said the old man carelessly. He picked up his bonnet and turned, but halfway to the door stopped to speak. ‘That’s two houses in this land ye needn’t soil with your foot from this day on. Midculter and Branxholm. I hear your brother has banned ye the door.’

‘Do you?
Who told you that?
’ Lymond said, and Buccleuch, half-roused, looked at him Wearily. ‘It’s the clack of Biggar,’ he said. ‘And the conjecture is fair making the Dowager spit. I hear that she and Culter are at odds about it already. The muckle Fiend fend ye; why don’t you leave the country and let us all be at peace? What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go?’

‘I like to see friends at my bloodsuppers,’ said Lymond with a sudden, intolerable venom. ‘Pass the word round. To fight against me is to resist the Lord, who visits thy sins with such rods.… I am here, Buccleuch. I am staying here. Until winter, at least.’

‘Are ye?’ said Buccleuch. ‘I think ye’ll not. I’ll wager my son’s ring, in fact, to that sapphire ye wear, that the Queen Dowager has ye out before then.… This ring. It’s a good one. Ye’d get a good bit for that,’ said Buccleuch, and threw the band of thick gold on the bed.

It lay between them, glinting emptily, describing the young, big-boned finger where it belonged. ‘Yon Gabriel,’ said Buccleuch suddenly, and the water had begun running innocently down his surprised and angry face again. ‘He gave me a line of prayer to say. I’ve said it, when I thought of it, whiles ever since. “God give me another lad like thee”, it runs. “God give me another lad like thee … and syne take me to His rest”.’