The Disorderly Knights (63 page)

‘Wat!’ said his wife Janet, emerging briskly from the tent into which she had been pushed, fuming, at the start of the break.

‘I was just going to mention,’ said Sir Wat, giving up, aggrieved, some part of his design, ‘that I hadna seen the two Crawfords speak this morning. Culter must still be showing that ill-spawned young jangler the door.’

Anything to do with Lymond, Jerott knew and Blacklock now
noted, would always draw Gabriel’s full attention. He said now, still quietly, ‘I’m not sure what you mean. Is there trouble between Francis and his brother?’

‘Wat!’ said the voice of female doom over Buccleuch’s shoulder.

He ignored it. ‘Oh, aye. They’ve quarrelled!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Culter’s flung his brother out o’ Midculter, and Sybilla’s fair chawsed. Did Joleta not mention it? Biggar’s exhausted with guesswork.… Ah, ye were right, Adam. There’s the signal. Ye should have a word with your young friend about it, Sir Graham. A man of God such as yourself, brought up to entertain and nourish love, peace and unity and with a heidful of texts forbye should find no hardship in it.’ And heaving himself up, Buccleuch nodded and offered an iron arm to his crimson-faced wife.

Graham Malett’s fresh-skinned face, smooth as a sea-worn rock, smooth as an imbecile’s, smooth as that of a man at complete spiritual ease with himself, reflected the shadow of trouble. But he smiled at the old man notwithstanding, and said, ‘Do you think so? Somehow I don’t think M. le Comte de Sevigny would agree with you.’ And as Buccleuch, peching mysteriously, moved off, Gabriel sighed, and catching the eyes of Jerott and Adam Blacklock, ruefully smiled. ‘I love my young friend, but this afternoon, I seem to be a little overwhelmed with his ineffable wake. Lancelot Plummer was having a stroke, nearly, when I found him, over some mild misdemeanour he and Tait had enjoyed at Liddel Keep, that all the Kerrs have been badgering him about today.’

The theft of Nixon’s Staurotheque, thought Jerott, but didn’t say so. Instead he remarked, ‘Had Lymond told the Kerrs about it?’

‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ said Gabriel. ‘But Plummer thought he had. And then Fergie Hoddim was annoyed because he had been accused, virtually, of showing off his knowledge of law—not without justice, believe me,’ said Gabriel, a shade of exasperation entering the rich voice. ‘But if that same young man would apply his intelligence to delegating his work just a little and sparing his own health, he would be able to control himself and us just a little more easily.… Alec!’ He turned, smiling, as Guthrie stumped up behind, ready for food. ‘I’m getting old. I’m delivering lectures on the obstinacy of the young.’

‘Criticizing the command, eh?’ said Alec Guthrie drily. ‘It’s an ancient pursuit. Flamboyance, intolerance, cruelty are all faults of the young, true enough; but not only of the young. You knew what you were doing when you placed yourself under him.’

With calm speed, Gabriel was fastening his points. ‘Of course I did. I wished to regain as quickly as possible all the skills I once had in Malta, and also perhaps to help Francis a little too. I think I may have done that. I know he has helped me more than he knows himself.
It’s only that … shut off from all affairs of the spirit, all art and all graces in the hard life he’s led, it is sometimes a little hard to reach his understanding … over things I might feel are important, and he, perhaps quite rightly, does not.’

‘A sensitive mercenary would be a contradiction in terms, don’t you think?’ said Guthrie. ‘If he does nothing else, he makes us aware of our own weaknesses at least. I know I’m an argumentative old bastard who tends to hold up the action by talk. As now. Shouldn’t you all be at your posts?’

He was right. They scattered, grinning; and Jerott, completing the circuit back to the dais, saw that Wharton and Drumlanrig were in their chairs with all their officials, and that Lymond, as before, was on horseback close behind. He also saw, now that he searched for it, Richard Crawford’s family banner on the far side of the Stank and, finally, Lord Culter’s grave, well-built person, exchanging words with all his near neighbours and not troubling to glance once in the direction of his younger brother.

It must be true, then. They had quarrelled. But over what? Ever since Will’s death, Buccleuch had boiled with anger over Lymond. He would be ready to invent any libel. But why had Adam Blacklock been so anxious to intervene? And Lady Buccleuch? Jerott made up his mind to have a word with Blacklock, at least, before the day was over.

But, of course, the day wasn’t over yet.

Jerott wondered, if it came to bloodshed, what the Wardens expected of St Mary’s, and what each secretly hoped. Sir James Douglas, who knew a great deal about Francis Crawford, had been guardedly friendly. Lord Wharton, who had been tricked too often in the past to feel anything but pure dislike for Lymond, had been brought in the last few months, through exhaustive and contemptuous inquiry, to a grudging respect for his ability. They could converse, as they had talked all the way to Hadden, on matters concerning the conduct of armies. On personal subjects, and on everything to do with the recent war between their two countries, Lymond was tactfully and Wharton stubbornly silent.

Jerott noted further that Lord Wharton was one of the very few people totally humourless on whom Lymond refrained from exercising his wit. From which he deduced that, professional that he was, Lymond equally respected the little Cumberland man’s grip of his job. On the whole, he thought that the Wardens would enjoy seeing St Mary’s in action, for all their reservations about its commander.

The afternoon wore on. Now the more serious cases were coming before the tribunal: cases of wholesale theft and bloodshed; cases involving whole families, mainly of broken men such as the Turn-bulls had been, who scraped an illegal living in the boggy wastes of
land which neither country cared to claim. There was a good deal of raucous shouting, some sound cursing and one or two drunken struggles, as well as a volleying orchestration of comment and insult from the watching crowd, but no mass movements had started, either for or against the defenders or pursuivants, and the feuding families, coldly oblivious each of the other’s presence, kept to themselves.

Down by the river, the sport was well under way: wrestling, shooting, fighting with sword and cudgel. The booths were gradually emptying of their wares as the huckstering and peddling came to a hoarse conclusion and men turned to spend their money on the acrobats, the jugglers, the fortune-tellers, and on, of course, the jolly, well-built, sunburnt women who swaggered back-slapping through the crowds and gave as good as they got when the fresh hogsheads were rolled out dripping from the carts, and the well-worn quips undulated about their impervious ears.

In mid-afternoon Gabriel, whose splendour on horseback no restraint on his part could dim, observed to Jerott, ‘We are, I fear, a subject for good healthy merriment along the river. Does it strike you, as it does me, that our respected leader is exercising his right once again to keep us alert? March meetings, in other words, are goodly things which remove dullness from little boys.…’

The thought had occurred to Jerott. Before he could speak, however, Adam Blacklock on his other side said, ‘You w-weren’t here two years ago. If folk from one side of the Border met the other, it was to fight; and pick the eyes from the naked dead afterwards. I’ve seen the Douglases and the Scotts play handball through the streets of Kelso with severed English heads for the ball.’

Gabriel’s unclouded blue eyes turned on him. ‘What were you doing there? Sketching them?’

The artist flushed.

Graham Malett noted it, but his voice was gentle. ‘And what did you gain from that? Are you a better artist, Adam, for drawing only men of violence and acting in their brutal engagements? Do you expect to become hardened to it? You never will. You have too fine a grain.’ Graham Malett’s deep, rich voice hardened for a moment. ‘There is nothing romantic about killing for money.’

But Adam Blacklock’s lean, nondescript face with the untidy hair was blank. ‘It depends whom you kill,’ he said.

With a half-exasperated, half-amused groan, Gabriel clapped his free hand to his brow. ‘Francis again,’ he said. ‘Do you
know
that you are all becoming copyists as faithfully mannered as the Chinaman who sat on the plate? I shall never redeem one of you until I have his ungodly heart.’

‘He hasn’t got one,’ Blyth said shortly. ‘Godly or ungodly.’

‘He has something,’ said Gabriel gently. ‘Or why else do we follow
him? Why else is Adam here concealing what he knows? Something happened at Dumbarton, something so painful that Lord Culter has become estranged. Must I ask Culter myself?’

‘Why not ask L-Lymond?’ said Adam Blacklock, his gaze resolutely avoiding Jerott Blyth’s.

‘Because I think he hates me,’ said Gabriel, and his gaze, drifting past them, rested on the distant, confident horseman, leaning down to talk to Wharton’s clerk and then side-stepping to where Buccleuch stood to stoop chatting to him. Lymond’s head,
jaune-paille
in the clear sun, was without a helm.

‘… I think he hates me,’ Gabriel repeated, bitterness for once in the deep voice. ‘A fine churchman, a dexterous shepherd, is Graham Malett. This one man I cannot reach.’

The words were to remain, engraved leadenly on the air and on Jerott Blyth’s memory. For just as they were spoken, the English Warden Thomas, Lord Wharton, reached the case of the three rows of women.

They were English women, with good Border names, of peasant and small yeoman stock. Not ladies of pedigree; nor, on the other hand, loose women or gypsies. They wore decent fustian gowns and long hair, to show they were unmarried, and they sat in the benches reserved for those lodging complaint. With them, bawling, squealing, fighting, slavering, and much occupied in casual regurgitation, were their children.

The fact became clear gradually as the clerk’s weakening voice wheezed through the list of cases; and as he went on, the depleted crowd round the open-air court became markedly brisker, and in a kind of simmering movement, like oatmeal on the hob, began to thicken and bubble and spread until three-quarters of the total March meeting or all those not otherwise urgently engaged were standing watching the court.

The complaints, notice of which had been received too late to make known until now, were all the same. Nell Hudson, formerly of the Baxter Raw, Carlisle, did complain that Gilbert Kerr of Green-head, having promised her marriage and got her with child, had heinously broken the said promise and had neither taken her honourably to his bed and board, nor acknowledged and maintained the child. Nell Hudson therefore prayed the Wardens to so judge that either Gilbert Kerr of Greenhead should marry her, with all goodly haste, or if constrained by virtue of prior wedlock, should admit to and maintain his son.

Gilbert Kerr of Greenhead, who was fifty-five and had eight children by his (living) third wife, had hardly done shouting his denials when the next case was reeled off.

Bess Storer of Little Ryle complained that Sir Thomas Kerr of
Ferniehurst, heir to Sir John Kerr of that ilk, having promised her marriage and got her with child, had broken the said promise and had neither fulfilled his engagement nor maintained the said child.… Sir Thomas Kerr, who was seventeen, stood, pink as a flamingo among the squeals of his friends, and looked both surprised and pleased as he craned to see the aforesaid Bess Storer—pleased until he saw his father’s black face.

Meg Hall of Screnwood blamed George Kerr of Linton; and Allie Lorimer of Haggerston, George Kerr of Gateshaw or Robin Kerr of Graden—she was not sure which. Sir Andrew Kerr of Littledean, a vast and sober citizen until recently Provost of Edinburgh, had sired two girls, it was said. Walter Kerr of Dolphinton, Gilbert Kerr of Primsideloch and Andrew Kerr of the same were each named as unwilling fathers, and the young laird, Andrew Kerr, Cessford’s son, was accused of engendering twins, and was juvenile enough to crow triumphantly in the direction of Sir Thomas Kerr. The climax came when, half an hour later, Wat Kerr of Cessford himself was named as father of Sue Bligh of Bamburgh’s four sons.

It might have been harmless enough save for one thing. Lying or not, each woman had brought two witnesses. And the accusation against Kerr of Cessford happened to be true, and everyone there knew it to be true, although no one had ever been able to prove it.

It was not surprising then that the clap of laughter which had begun, after the third or fourth notice, to greet every new accusation overreached itself in the case of Sir Walter and fairly frightened the moorhens off the Tweed a hundred yards off. Then it broke off, as a bottle shears at the neck, at the sight of Walter Kerr’s blunt, battle-scarred face as the head of the Cessford Kerrs drew his sword screaming from the sheath and drove it into the ground before the Wardens’ dais.

‘De’il draw ye tae hell. Are ye daft? Is this a March meeting or the ribald outrage of children? The women are bought; the witnesses are plainly lying. The very malicious naming of near every member of mine and Ferniehurst’s family is enough to prove falsehood and malice, and by God, ye won’t seek far to ken whose it is!’ And Cessford’s eyes, seamed with apoplectic blood, veered to the bland, brosy whiskers of Buccleuch.

He finished in silence. As the words rang out, thin in the wide air, Lord Wharton said sharply from his chair, ‘I must pray you, show the respect which this Chair demands. Clearly, the coincidence is not unremarked. The evidence must be sifted and the witnesses reheard. The source of malice, if proved, will be sought. Until then, you will judge as you expect to be judged, on firm evidence only.’

He got Cessford to unearth his sword and withdraw, just a little,
while the questioning went on. But the ranks of the Kerrs, of a sudden, had grown remarkably well-knit and grave; and the ranks of the Scotts, glittering with polish, stood trimly as they had throughout. Behind both families, deployed silently on Lymond’s orders at the outset of the case, stood two thirds of the officers and men of St Mary’s, markedly vigilant and, Jerott was sure, not so markedly memorizing names and addresses.