The Disorderly Knights (67 page)

The look of contempt which had crossed Jerott’s magnificent face did not alter. ‘You and Gabriel, side by side?’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, let’s keep our senses. Somewhere, no doubt, there is a great and selfless leader. But you are a mercenary.’

‘I didn’t think, somehow, that you approved of Gabriel’s plan,’ said Lymond, and smiled suddenly. ‘But I challenge your definition, all the same. A mercenary fights for a living, and for love of battle.’

‘Well?’ Jerott was not impressed. ‘You have, I suppose, other sources of easy money. But you love all this.’

He waved his arm. All about them, against the bright, sharp green of the bracken, the purpling sage of the heather, the brown roots and green mosses, twinkled the steel of armed men. All about them, above the trickle of stream and piping of curlew and trill of lark came the suck and pull of hooves in soft ground, the chink of sword and tinkle of bit and creak of leather, the jangle of harness and grumble of talking voices, with voices raised to call, to direct, to comment, to quip, criss-crossing the haugh. And all the time, as they rode, the brown faceless men up and down the valley watched where Lymond’s horse moved, with his two colleagues. A hand raised, one sign, and they would move to his will: to stop a battle or start one; to save lives or to kill. ‘You love all this!’ said Jerott.

‘
Love it!
’ said Lymond, and Adam Blacklock looked up sharply.

Recalled to himself, Francis Crawford smiled, a little wryly, and dropped his voice. ‘An overdose of applied conjecture. I’m sorry. The answer, Jerott, is that I don’t find this particularly enjoyable.’

Jerott’s gaze didn’t move. ‘What do you miss? Women?’

Lymond looked ahead. ‘The point you always seem to be making, Jerott, is that I don’t lack them enough. No, I don’t miss fair company. Look what I’ve got instead.’

‘Then what?’ Jerott pursued, ignoring utterly Blacklock’s silent advice to be quiet.

‘Jerott, for God’s sake! Are you doing this for a wager?’ said Lymond, his patience gone at last. ‘What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-damned year.’

He stopped. Adam Blacklock, saying nothing, looked down; and even Jerott, after the first moments, removed his troubled gaze. Then, as their horses paced evenly on, Jerott Blyth said blankly, ‘
Music?
’

But Lymond, whatever his motives, had by now had more than enough. Touching his spurs to the big horse, he shot ahead without answering, and Blyth and Blacklock were left in silence, riding behind.

*

Thompson, it was at once obvious, was doing well. The
Magdalena
, floating under bare poles in a leafy anchorage in the Kyles of Bute, was a large and roomy merchantman with holds for salt and pitch and potash and wool and hides and malmsey and salt fish, and a good false bottom for contraband. Jerott, looking her over as he awaited his turn up the ladder, thought that she might have quite a comfortable turn of speed to her, as well as God knew what hidden arms. From where he stood a brass falcon, not even covered, flashed in the sun.

Downstairs in Thompson’s cabin, beside the one he and Lymond would share, Jerott sat next to the pirate’s horny grey parrot, his feet on an Indian prayer rug and a chipped earthenware beaker of wine in his hands, and toasted the forthcoming voyage. Thompson, whose own cup was solid chased silver devoted to the nude female form, drained it and looked pointedly at the full mug idling in Lymond’s hands.

‘Oh, no,’ said Lymond, putting it down. ‘I’m not going through all that again. Jockie, I have one condition to make. I want these men to become good fighting seamen. I don’t want them in Waterford jail.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said the captain of the
Magdalena
equably. Solid, changeless, brown as a pippin above the black, salt-blasted beard, he pinned Lymond with the shrewdest black eyes in the Irish Sea, and slapped his cup down.

‘No. You damned near run it, you liar,’ said Lymond. ‘What cargo have you got?’

‘None. We’re on our way to Lambay to load. Linen yarn and some wool, for Antwerp.’

‘I thought the Head of Howth was Logan’s bailiwick,’ said Lymond. ‘And how in God’s name do you expect to get into and out of Antwerp unhung? Every customar in the Baltic is ready to eat you out of a poke.’

‘The
Magdalena
,’ said the pirate Thompson, opening his black eyes wide, ‘is no yin o’ Logan’s auld buckets to stop weans with and steal their sweeties. The
Magdalena
is a clean ship, that pays her charges and dips her bit flag when she should; and Stephenson there is her captain. In port, ye understand.… I was in Antwerp the other week.’

‘And that’s a bloody lie,’ said Lymond.

‘
And
shipped a cargo of gunpowder and fifty barrels of sulphur,’ said Thompson.

‘From
Antwerp?
’ said Jerott, avoiding Lymond’s eye. ‘But that’s impossible. The Emperor’s desperate for munitions for all his own commitments. He stopped all exports of powder from the Low Countries months ago. Where in God’s name were you taking it to? England?’

‘No,’ said Thompson, gratified. He sniffed, and lifting the flagon, slopped the beautiful wine into Jerott’s cup and his own. ‘Mind, ye’d get a fair price, for they’re desperate too, but they ken baith me and Stephenson, ye’ll understand. No. I took it to—’ He stopped. ‘Aye, aye. I forgot it was Francis Crawford. It was a rare bit o’ dialogue, and ye fair had me going, at that. Mind your ain God-damned business. Yon Hough Isa was a rare cook!’

Lymond, unperturbed, raised his hand with the sapphire. ‘You don’t want it back?’

‘No, no. It was a fair bargain. I’d gie ye another for the lassie ye had that other night, though.’

‘Not before the children,’ said Lymond, ‘you damned inquisitive old rake. And you were in Djerba. The place stinks of carob seeds, and I know the man that put the dimples in the ladies’ bottoms on that cup.… It is not considered ethical to supply arms to the infidel. Jerott will tell you. But I’ll wager anything you like they paid you in French money.’

There was a hoarse sound, which Jerott recognized after a moment as laughter, and then the pirate heaved himself up. ‘Sharp as rat’s teeth, aren’t ye? We’ll have a grand passage. I’ll guarantee nobody’ll jail Thompson this trip, but we’ll no lack for fun forbye.… There’s a friend o’ yours here. Stopped by at Brest, and wouldna be hindered from coming when he heard you were to be aboard.’

‘Then I hope to God he’s discreet,’ said Lymond, staring. Thompson, stepping forward, flung open the door.

‘I am a Frenchman, so therefore by nature discreet. Particularly,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, Geographer to His Most Christian Majesty of France, stepping through the doorway, his brown, inquisitive face alight, ‘when agitating the feet. How are you,
mon brave?
’ And jumping forward on his spry velvet toes, he embraced first Lymond and then Jerott on both cheeks.

But it was not to be a lingering reunion. One had time to remember the hospital at Birgu, from which de Nicolay had extracted Lymond from the mortuary; the Turkish camp at Tripoli; the fated homeward journey back to Malta. Jerott, catching the little man’s bright eyes on him more than once, curious under the runic crest of grey hair, wondered if to an onlooker it was strange, and even despicable,
this abrupt departure from Malta of a knight dedicated as he had been.

But his principles had not altered. Malta had receded, because it was no longer the centre of his religion. It was no longer worthy of his allegiance: that was to an ideal, to his Faith, as represented by Gabriel here.

For the rest, his life was St Mary’s. He found it satisfying; more than absorbing. He was proud of the company and of his share in it. He looked forward to what it could do. But it was purely secular in its objects, and in a way, as Lymond had shrewdly guessed, he dreaded this free brotherhood being forced into the mould of the Religion. And to restore Malta, he was beginning to see, as Lymond saw, you needed true faith—faith to soften the facts, as well as the risks. If you saw too clearly.… What was he thinking? He must bring his mind back to the
Magdalena
, and Thompson, agitating to be off.… But what he had been about to conclude was, surely, more important still.
If you saw too clearly, you might not wish to restore Malta at all
.

It was then that Fergie Hoddim, projecting his courtroom voice from a dinghy far below in the smooth waters of the Kyle, brought first Thompson, and then his guests out on deck. After an interval of shouting, a ladder was thrown down to him and he came up, with all the speed of a man trained at St Mary’s. At the top, he stepped down on the deck, dug into his jerkin, and produced a folded packet for Lymond.

It was a message from the Queen Dowager of Scotland, written at Falkland, sent on to St Mary’s and thence carried to Greenock where the bearer, Ross Herald, looking green in the pitching dinghy, had been thankful to find one of Lymond’s own men about to return.

In it was a peremptory command to Francis Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sevigny, to present himself at once, on pain of horning, at the Palace of Falkland, to answer to Her Grace for certain activities for which he had been recently responsible.

Tossing it to Jerott to read, Lymond turned to the
Magdalena’s
captain. ‘Have a good trip,’ he said. ‘You go alone. Jerott will tell you why. Adam, you will go ashore with me now, along with Salablanca, and ride with me to Falkland. Jerott, you have control, under Thompson, of the St Mary’s men, and will act as the captain’s officer between him and them. I shall meet the
Magdalena
when you come back, or send Adam if I can’t. Jockie, I have some private advice for you, which you don’t deserve.…’

To the men on the crowded decks, watching, the exchange between Thompson and Lymond appeared to take a long time and to be remarkably mirthless in character. By the time Lymond swung himself down the ladder, waving briefly to the rest at the rails, Adam Blacklock was already in the boat with his possessions, and Salablanca lending a hand with the dinghy’s small sail, while Robbie
Forman, Ross Herald, sat rigid beneath. Then, in a moment, it seemed, the boom swung over, the sheet tightened, and the little boat veered off and vanished behind the green trees of Bute.

*

Because of the herald, Adam Blacklock kept his thoughts to himself during the journey upriver, and Lymond hardly spoke at all, except to make some desultory conversation with Forman and later, at the stables at Dumbarton, to ask Adam if the long ride to Falkland would be too much for his weak leg. Adam answered curtly, once he got the consonant out, that it would not; and they were off, riding as fast as he ever wished to travel again, with Salablanca and the baggage horses behind.

Night overtook them at Stirling; and to save the protesting bones of Ross Herald who had, after all, just ridden across half the Lowlands to fetch them, Lymond allowed a few hours’ rest in a tavern bed. Then, with fresh horses, they set out again.

Just before they did so, waiting with Salablanca for Robbie Forman to come into the yard, Adam seized the moment to ask one at least of his questions. ‘Why the hurry? Normal travelling speed, surely, is all the Queen Dowager would expect?’

‘There is someone ahead of us,’ said Lymond.

‘You want to c-catch him?’

‘I want to get to Falkland before him. Here is Forman,’ was all Lymond said.

Two hours later, Ross Herald, grey with fatigue and the horrors of the Clyde estuary, fell by the wayside; and watching Lymond’s expression as he took leave of him, tucked up moaning in a friend’s bed at Kinross, Adam appreciated suddenly one at least of his reasons for speed. Patience being one of the prime requisites of the artist, he waited, riding in silence, until Lymond said briefly, ‘You don’t have to be so damned tactful. You haven’t had a drink for four days. Have you?’

‘No.’

‘And Bell’s little remedies are finished with. So you may consider yourself trustworthy. Ever heard of George Paris?’

Anyone who had been in France knew that. ‘He was an agent,’ said Blacklock, wasting no more time than Lymond did. ‘For those Irish lords wishing F-French or Scottish help to throw off the English overlordship in Ireland. I don’t know what he does now.’

‘He’s a double agent,’ said Lymond. ‘Now that French interest is falling off he’s trying England for his pension. Thompson got wind of it through some old Irish cronies of his who heard from some exiled friends in London. Unhappily, Thompson’s hands are tied because
he’s mixed up in some illegal trading with Paris and one of Paris’s Irish rebel friends, Cormac O’Connor.…’ He glanced round.

‘Oh,’ said Adam Blacklock, just too late.

‘I had forgotten,’ said Francis Crawford with precision, ‘what bloody gossip-mongering old women soldiers were. I take it the whole company knows about Oonagh O’Dwyer?’

There was a second’s pause. ‘I know that she was Cormac O’Connor’s mistress,’ said Adam.

‘I’m damned sure you do, and enough to write a book about, besides. You realize then that Cormac O’Connor is no blood-brother of mine, since I helped her to get away from him. When that attempt to set himself up as the saviour of Ireland failed, he resorted to petty intrigue and some quick ways of raising money, such as Thompson’s insurance scheme. Because he’s implicated in this, his friends in Ireland won’t betray Paris, and neither will he, unless he’s pushed to it. Paris has too much evidence against him in his insurance swindle. On the other hand, if Paris was going to be exposed anyway, O’Connor might get his oar in first, on the premise that no one will look too closely at a small swindle if he hands them a double agent on a plate.’

‘And
is
Paris likely to be exposed?’ asked Adam.