The Disorderly Knights (89 page)

‘At Birgu he would have liked to have overloaded us with useless mouths; on the eve of the sailing for Tripoli he hid in the hospital rather than leave. And once in Tripoli, don’t you remember how he bribed the Calabrian soldiers to let him out of imprisonment—the Calabrians, with whom he was so friendly, and who finally tried to blow up the castle and desert the Order by sea? Don’t you remember the mysterious spy who informed the Turks to fire on the St Brabe bulwark, not the St James? … Who paid him, do you suppose? Who, do you remember, tried to get the French knights in the garrison again and again to rise against the Marshal and the Spanish knights and to hold Tripoli by themselves alone? How long, do you suppose, would they have troubled to hold out? Who found it so simple, when he wished, to escape the city with his band of freed slaves and reach the Turkish camp unharmed? Who escaped to the Turks again, leaving his mistress to drown?

‘
I
wanted no sovereignty!’ cried Gabriel, his deep voice rising in his distress. ‘Before the battle on Malta, as anyone will tell you, I was asked to lead, and I refused. I took my oath to obey only one
master on earth, and to that I hold. But this … this animal in spangles, this bright, malicious harlot … this furious and fatuous young man, would take a great Order, and now attempts to take a great nation and with his puny, ill-informed fingers, crumble it into rubble on which he may strut.…’ He raised his voice against a sudden uproar that floated in through the open, packed doors and merged, muttering, with the congregation already within. ‘Shall I go on? Need I go on?’

‘Please do,’ said Lymond politely, his eyes suddenly bright. ‘And forgive the clamour outside. Half the French troops, it appears, have gone off hunting Kerrs and we have been joined by a large part of our friends from St Mary’s. Also by my family from Midculter. And also by Madame Donati.’

‘Evangelista?’ said Malett slowly. ‘Crazed by the death of my sister? What kind of witnesses are these? In any case, we have no need of them. We all know how Will Scott came to die. And now his father, killed because he knew too much. What was in George Paris’s papers, I wonder? Evidence that as a friend of Thompson you were also a traitor with Paris, so that at Falkland you even told Cormac O’Connor that the Queen Dowager was aware of Paris’s misdemeanours, to prevent him telling her the truth? The sapphire you have been wearing—strangely missing today—was given you by Thompson—why? A hard-headed corsair gives nothing for nothing.’

Before Lymond could speak Jerott, ill-advisedly, had answered that one. ‘He bought a woman from him. I was there.’

Malett looked round, disgust on his face. ‘For a jewel of that price! And why, then, is it hidden today?’

‘It isna hidden.’ Plain, uncompromising, it was the voice of Janet Beaton, her strong-boned face queer and puffy with weeping but her step firm and her chin high as she came down the nave, her sister hesitant behind. At Gabriel’s side she halted, and looking up to the altar steps she said in a changed voice, ‘I hae come from my slaughtered husband, Francis Crawford, with something to give you. This I took from his hand: it was his son’s ring and I mean you to have it. This’—and in the steady glow of the candles she held up a sapphire, the fire in it burning through and through—‘this was not on his fist when he left Branxholm. Is it yours?’

‘Yes,’ said Lymond; and nothing more. But Jerott, with sudden illumination, remembered stumbling over that silent, kneeling figure in the Luckenbooths, and seeing Lymond, rising, replace Buccleuch’s thick, blood-streaked hand at his side with long, gentle fingers that hid what they had done.

But whatever Lymond’s reason had been, he had no intention, clearly, of giving it; and no need. Janet’s gesture, fresh from her husband’s bier, was enough. And when she turned from Lymond’s
still face to the fair, concerned features of Gabriel, her whole manner commanded, although her eyes were wet and her nose swollen and red. ‘I heard from Robert,’ said Janet Beaton contemptuously, ‘how you filled the Dowager’s ears with bonny tales of Lymond’s deficiencies, for all ye defended him so nobly in public. No doubt ye did the same at St Mary’s. No doubt they’ve all heard how Will Scott died because Francis Crawford was whoring at Dumbarton and drunk at Liddesdale and for all their work, they had to go into action ill-managed, ill-trained and ill-led.’

She spun round, her voice hoarse, and addressed not only Graham Malett but the rapt faces in the recesses of the wide church behind her. ‘Shall I tell you,’ she said, ‘how and why Will Scott died? And shall I tell you how and why Buccleuch died like a dog in the gutter today?’

And so the story of the Hot Trodd was told, and was supported, voice to voice, where they sat, by those who had evidence of its truth. And after that, Janet turned to Lymond and, cool-voiced, he described the events of that day and how, deliberately, the Kerrs had been sent to murder Buccleuch. Wat Scott knew nothing—and Lord Provost Hamilton, rising stiffly, confirmed it—of any crime committed by Kerrs which would be revealed by Paris’s papers. The Kerrs had been dispatched into Edinburgh in the hope that they would do murder; and on their exit, word had been sent to d’Oisel that Buccleuch was dead, though in fact he was not dead, and no one except the Kerrs actually involved knew he was stabbed.

‘You knew George Paris was a double agent,’ said Lymond, his calmly modulated voice breaking in again. ‘You contrived in London to obtain his money and papers—Mistress Somerville can testify to that. And, staying with Ormond, you found it easy to approach Cormac O’Connor and sound him out about the betrayal of Paris. Because of course you knew who Paris was—you had seen him in France at least once, although he did not know you. Thomas Wishart knew that. His task, from the moment you left Malta, was never to let you out of his sight. Jerott thought he was following him, but that was not so. We wished to know, Sir Graham, exactly what you did, and what you did was most interesting.

‘In any case,’ said Lymond, and unclasping his hands he rose slowly to his feet and stood, head bent, looking down at Gabriel. ‘In any case, Tosh was killed, and by your men. Trotty Luckup, too, was killed, because she knew too much about Joleta.… Madame Donati has told us all we need to know about that. And because Philippa Somerville had the same piece of information, she also was attacked and is lucky to be alive.… Of all these things we have proof.’

Gabriel stirred. ‘Must I hear this?’ he said. ‘With the jewels you obviously have, with whatever wealth you have earned as your
wages, you can bribe whom you like to say what you like. What you did on Malta and in Tripoli cannot be condoned. Nothing you fabricate now can obliterate it.’

‘Shall I ask Nicolas de Nicolay to speak?’ said Lymond softly. ‘Or would you care to see this, that I took from your clothing the day that
you
, not I, tried to escape to the Turkish camp at Mdina? A piece of white paper, Sir Graham. A dirty, bloodstained piece of white paper with a message in English of the most loyal intent on one side. And on the other, a note in your own handwritten Arabic, giving them all the information they needed about the Receiver’s false message from Sicily.’

It was defeat. His eyes wet for the annihilation of what had never truly existed, Jerott Blyth saw Gabriel draw himself up, as he seldom did, to his full magnificent height, the golden head high; all his thoughts, all his attention on the younger man standing still above him on the carpeted steps.

‘Dear me,’ said Gabriel mildly, the great voice pitched for Francis Crawford alone. ‘What an importunate young man you are. You have just cost me, I believe, a quite excessive amount of my time. I shall be interested to pursue the matter with you, on some other occasion. At the moment … de Seurre!’

Then Jerott realized that he was going to appeal to St Mary’s. The great company whose allegiance he had so confidently set out to command was here, deployed round St Giles, brought there at the first opportunity by its officers after d’Oisel’s full escorting corps had been removed. One would trust de Seurre and des Roches and the rest to have done that without bloodshed. Their aim was not to escape but to see justice done, to be present at what touched them so vitally: the
Vehmgerichte
of their two leaders.

But they would not expect to escape mortal issues if they placed themselves now in Gabriel’s hand. The axe was too sharp and too sweetly polished to fail. Good as the French were, if the Order now clove to its own: if the knights stood firm in their devotion to Gabriel; if Plummer, if Tait, if all the souls Graham Malett had enchanted now came at his call, and brought their army with them, the French would melt as agate on the hot blade, and the weapon Lymond had forged would be loose, under Gabriel, in the world.

So, ‘De Seurre,’ said Graham Malett, his voice firm, his fair face sober and set. ‘Antichrist is here. I can do no more against him, or against these poor souls who malign me. Give me your hand. Come with me. Add your great spirit and your prayers to mine, and bring with you all who would come, pure and loyal and unsullied, before the great Throne of God.… Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord,’ said Graham Malett, and tall and still at the foot of the steps he faced the high altar, his fair head flung back, his eyes on the Cross.
‘Absolve the souls of thy servants from the chain of their sins, that being raised in the glory of the Resurrection, they may live among the saints and their elect.’

The echoes of the magnificent voice, mouthing from pillar to pillar, grew muffled and died. No one spoke. Outside, the crowd had fallen into a murmurous silence, and the men of St Mary’s, taut at their posts, watched the great doors of the church where their officers stood, listening to the Order calling its knights.

Then de Seurre stirred. Tough, prosaic, deeply religious, he had been Gabriel’s strongest support in all the cold, unseen struggle of ethos against ethos, and his face, hairless as limed leather, showed nothing of the conflict that indictment and appeal, so closely following, must have produced. As he neared Gabriel, M. d’Oisel, aware, Jerott knew, of the full menace St Mary’s represented, said nevertheless, calmly, in his excellent English, ‘For Sir Graham to leave now is out of the question. The charges on both sides are far too serious to ignore. Both Sir Graham Malett and Mr Crawford will kindly give up their swords.’

Graham Malett did not even look at him. ‘Well?’ he said to de Seurre.

The Chevalier de Seurre looked round. There, watching silent and tense in the nave, were the men who had abandoned Graham Malett for Lymond: Blacklock, Guthrie, Hoddim, Salablanca and Abernethy. By the door, equally intent, were those who, like himself, had stayed staunchly by their beliefs and their vows. He waited a moment, drawing from them whatever silent support he needed, and then turned. ‘Sir Graham. In the name of justice we believe you must stay and answer these charges,’ said the Chevalier. ‘We cannot in conscience join you or follow you now.’

The fine aquamarine eyes stretched open. The pure skin, draining first, flushed next to carnation pink as Graham Malett’s golden brows rose and his lips and chin flattened against his clenched teeth. Then, ‘
Must!
’ he said smiling, on a note no one present had heard before. ‘Must, fool … fat, God-sodden blunderer? There is nothing Graham Malett
must
do except clear the lice from his path.’

Beside him, Jerott Blyth drew a long, shuddering breath, his gaze turning to Lymond. But Lymond had eyes for no one but Gabriel and the Chevalier. His voice, saying sharply ‘
De Seurre!
’ cut across the sudden rising note of excitement both inside and outside the church, as thus abruptly, swift and terrible as a fissure in ice, the soulless, loving imposture came to an end.

Lymond exclaimed; but Michel de Seurre took one second too many to react. As he turned, Gabriel’s sword, naked in his hand, cut through de Seurre’s scabbard and disarmed him, in one vital movement, while at the same time with his free hand Graham Malett twisted the
Chevalier’s arm high and tight on his spine and held him, a living shield, before him. Then, instead of advancing, back exposed, into the crowded church, Gabriel backed, his blade before him scanning the air, until he was on the steps and just out of sword’s reach of Crawford.

If he were quick, he might just manage to slip inside and round the altar, past the Chapel of the Holy Cross, and out of the church by the Lady Steps without meeting more opposition than he could handle. To do that, he had somehow to put both Lymond and de Seurre out of action. As he backed, the Chevalier must have felt Gabriel’s muscles tense, and although he himself was fighting with every inch of packed muscle he possessed, must have known that with his great advantage of breadth and height, his Grand Cross could pick him up bodily if he chose, unarmed as he was, with one arm almost wrenched off at his back.

Then, like some chill, periastral missile, Lymond launched himself from the altar rails. The unexpectedness of it took more than de Seurre by surprise. Letting go his victim, rocked to his knees with the force of the blow as Lymond landed, Graham Malett staggered back, bent, and sword in hand, sprang. De Seurre, rolling out of the way, blundered into his own sawn-off scabbard and, sitting up, was attempting quickly to unsheath and rise when the Sieur d’Oisel’s hard hand stayed his wrist. ‘No. This is a case for single combat, if one ever existed. Start more, and the whole church will become a battlefield. This had to come, I would guess, some time. Let us listen and watch.’

And struggling to his feet, de Seurre moved back beside Jerott Blyth, back with the recoiling crowd, M. d’Oisel and the pick of his French troops forming a restraining cordon at its head, until within the altar rails, on the steps, on the fine Turkey carpet before the steps, there was no one but the two men facing one another from a space of a few yards, steel in hand.

And more than a hundred feet above their heads, above the choir roof vaulting, above the thronged, yellow-lit thread of the High Street, among the crowded Doric gables, sending its message of mourning round Edinburgh’s small hills and out into the dark spaces where the river Forth rolled, the Moaning Bell started to toll.