The Disorderly Knights (91 page)

With difficulty; with breath that must have seared his lacerated
throat as it rose, Sir Graham Malett said hoarsely, ‘I forgot, my winsome darling, that you were taught by the scum of the seas. What a pity that your Irish trollop and her grovelling bastard will never know what they’ve missed.’

Standing small, staunch and shivering beside her son Richard, Sybilla heard the words spoken to Francis at last. Jerott, understanding also, bent his head and covered his aching eyes with his hands. The men who had come to know Lymond well—Hoddim, Guthrie—stirred uneasily where they stood; and Adam Blacklock’s long artist’s hands tightened round Philippa who stood, looking at no one, misery in her dark-ringed eyes.

The bell tolled. Then Lymond said, the knife steady still in his hand, ‘I see. I could not quite understand your confidence. You had better tell me, in undecorated English, what you mean.’ And as Graham Malett smiled, his fine, long-lashed eyes on the knife, and said nothing, Lymond slowly withdrew it from his throat and sitting back on his heels, the dagger point aimed unwaveringly at Gabriel’s heart, said, ‘Speak.’

Graham Malett pulled himself up to his elbow. Round his neck, the furrow left by the cord showed plain among the swollen, purple flesh; beneath torn cloak and torn shirt the blood coursed steadily over the marked skin; but blotched, bruised and grazed, short of breath, hoarse of voice, the fine, fresh skin suffused and the short, guinea-gold hair dark with sweat and dust, he looked magnificent still: a fallen angel; an avenging god. ‘Did you think, peasant, that the woman O’Dwyer really died?’ said Gabriel with thick contempt. ‘She lived on to give birth to a child. But understood, of course, that Francis Crawford’s proud destiny should not be disturbed by the knowledge.…’

‘It is true,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay’s voice, uncommonly sober, from behind d’Oisel’s shoulder. Lymond did not look round.

‘It is true,’ Gabriel agreed, smiling. ‘I have two letters here, from Dragut, which will prove it.’ Reaching under his cloak, slowly because of the dagger, he found and threw down two dog-eared packets, their superscription written in Arabic. ‘You will read them with close interest, I am sure. From them, you will learn that I have purchased the child who has been reared with his mother under Dragut’s roof by my request. By now, also at my request, the woman O’Dwyer and her infant will have been removed from the palace to a place of greater security.…

‘Are you interested?’ said Graham Malett, lazily, his blue eyes sustaining the locked stare above him. ‘You should be. Because the child isn’t Cormac O’Connor’s. You will see, when you read. It is a boy, five months old, branded with Dragut’s mark, I am told, and given the name of Khaireddin. He is your son.

‘But no doubt,’ added Graham Malett softly, and made himself a little more comfortable as he lay, ‘you have got several such, unheeded equally. If so, your remedy is under your hand. Kill me, and the woman and child will both be quietly disposed of. Let me go, and you may find them yourself.’

Lymond drew back, controlled still by his schooled, fighter’s instincts. His face showed nothing. His hand, steadied now on one upraised knee, held the knife as before, perfectly still. But Sybilla, who knew him best, thought she saw his heart stop.

Oonagh O’Dwyer had not died through his agency. She could imagine what that meant to him. But what did it mean to know that he had left that proud woman behind to bear his child as a common possession of the Armenian sea-thief Dragut Rais; and that the child itself, the first and only son of his blood, instead of blossoming in that careful, careless affection which he had given already, so endearingly, to Kevin, had been bought like an animal, and branded like an animal, and was now being bartered, like some dirty, unconsidered coin, for Gabriel’s life?

She saw Francis begin, automatically, to breathe again. Above the dishevelment, the blood, the useless arm, the cold threat of the knife, his face was still, and old beyond its years. Yet for all his forced maturity and all his arts, Francis Crawford did not possess Gabriel’s true, impermeable mask, to speak, and smile and pray for him. The shock, the half-believing agony of mind showed now as he stared, shaken by the quiet force of his breathing, his brow lined, at Gabriel’s smiling, satisfied eyes.

The bell was stopping. Within the church, the silence had the quality of a forest at night. Whisperings, shufflings, jostlings, rustled through the herb-laden air, warmed by many bodies, and by the tapers, hissing and glittering in their diminishing clusters before every quiet shrine. Behind the two men, on the high altar, the massive silver-gilt plate glistened under the candelabra, and the crimson velvet, stirred by the draught from the open doors, nudged the candle flame into remote genuflection. The bell had stopped.

‘No,’ said Lymond at length; and his voice, though thick, was painstakingly distinct. ‘No … and again No. This time you have guessed wrongly. I am ready to give anything … even what is not mine to give … to see you dead. I think Oonagh O’Dwyer would have the courage to agree. For the child.… If there is a child.… If it is mine.… I must answer elsewhere.’

And a child’s voice, echoing his in turn, said, ‘
No!
’

Adam Blacklock, catching in vain at Philippa’s cloak as she wrested herself from his arms, saw Lymond’s face tighten, though he did not look round as the child ran forward, her strong voice calling, her brown twisted hair slapping her face.

‘No, Mr Crawford!’ cried Philippa forbiddingly, and ducking under the snatching arms that tried to prevent her, she ran forward. ‘No! What harm can Sir Graham do now? What might the little boy become?’ And sinking on her knees, she shook, in her vehemence, Lymond’s bloodstained arm.

‘You castigate the Kerrs and the Scotts and the others, but what is this but useless vengeance? He can do us no harm; he can do Scotland no harm; he can do Malta no harm. There is a
baby
!’ said Philippa, very loudly and insistently and desperately, as if Lymond could not hear her, or were too tired or too simple to understand. ‘There is a
baby
. You can’t abandon
your son!
’

It was Gabriel who answered, his light blue eyes smiling at Lymond, although it was to Philippa he spoke. ‘He won’t abandon him,’ he said. ‘He will go with him. Don’t you see? He will kill me, and then turn the knife on himself. Otherwise it would be a little too much like sacrificing Joleta, wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t it, my treasure?
’

‘What in God’s name …?’ said Jerott under his breath. It sounded as if Gabriel wanted to be killed, this mocking monotony of insistence.

Beside him, the Sieur d’Oisel spoke. ‘None of this is in God’s name,’ he said. ‘He is working on M. Crawford’s friends in the hope that they will persuade him to save the woman and child, and let Sir Graham go free.’

‘Stop it, then,’ said Jerott in a low voice. ‘Take Malett to the Tolbooth. Surely he can be made to say where the child is.’

D’Oisel turned. ‘Do you think so?’ he said. ‘I do not. If Malett comes with me to the Tolbooth, he must know that knight or not, he will hang. He bargains here for his life. Whether he tells the truth now or not, while Gabriel lives, there is hope of finding the infant.… If M. le Comte spares his life, Malett has at least some chance of escaping the Church. The Crown recognizes as much, and the Crown leaves the decision to M. Crawford. He has earned the right, God knows, to make it.’

Moving forward quietly to Jerott’s side, Adam Blacklock had heard. ‘Don’t you understand? The authorities are afraid of them both,’ he said gently. ‘Why do you supose this cordon is here, which only an unarmed girl was allowed to pass through? Lymond, loyal to Scotland, might be a threat to French power greater than even Gabriel, one of these days—
Philippa!
’

And a wordless shout, like a cry at a cockfight, rose among the stone pillars and sank muffled into the old, dusty banners above the choir roof. For Philippa Somerville, who believed in action when words were not enough, had leaned over and snatched the knife from Lymond’s left hand.

It was all that Gabriel had been waiting for. Rolling sideways he
sprang to his feet and hurled himself up the steps to the altar rail and over it to the sacred table beyond. On his face, triumphant, intent, there was no awareness of the bond between that high crucifix and the cross on his breast; of the years spent masquerading in prayer, of the great offices so humbly, so mockingly performed; the great names so familiarly mouthed. The massive monstrance with its golden bells, encrusted with pearls, stood firm at his hand. Bracing his great shoulders Graham Malett lifted it, and raising it high above his head, sent it crashing over the rails to where Lymond raced at his heels, the recovered dirk in his hand.

The heavy box caught him on the shoulder. As Philippa, a few steps below, shouted out, Lymond stumbled and half in company with the great battered casket, rolled and tumbled down to the foot.

‘Did you think,’ said Graham Malett, ‘this great enterprise of my life could be pinched out by a halfpenny pedlar of arrows? Go seek your son. You won’t find him. Nor will Cormac O’Connor, who claims Oonagh as his wife … and any child of hers as his son … is it not a matter for wit?’

The vessel had come to rest. Lymond stirred, and Gabriel, smiling, turned and using both hands, drew from the broken altar the long, shining blade of his sword. ‘You won’t find him,’ he said, ‘because he is going to have a new master. He will know the whipping-post, sweetheart, as you never knew it. He will learn to carry my filth, and when it pleases me, to sleep in my bed. It will teach you,’ said Gabriel, and holding the sword, he began walking, slowly, towards the shadows by the Lady Steps and the door. ‘It will teach you to remember Graham Malett.’

There must have been a horse waiting outside. There was, they found afterwards, a ship riding close in Leith roads. And because the French King’s Lieutenant in Scotland did not want trouble with the French King or the Order; and because he suspected that Lymond’s presence in Scotland might be an embarrassment to him, the order to pursue did not come as readily as it might, and Graham Malett caught both the horse and the ship.

Lymond had pulled himself to one knee, Philippa’s frightened face at his shoulder, when the men of St Mary’s realized that Graham Malett was being allowed to escape and, like sand sucked by the tide, they began to pour through the pillared vaults of the church to where the French still held their barrier firm.

Of those in the front, Jerott was the first to act. His white face blazing, he knocked up the sword-arm of the Frenchman standing before him and had begun to run forward, three men, sword in hand, flinging themselves on his heels, when Lymond, swaying, got to his feet and seizing Jerott as he passed, swung him round and held him to face the surging, shouting throng.

‘
Stop!
’ His voice, using all he knew of science to give weight to its weakness, cut through the uproar. ‘Stop, you cob-headed fools. Are you an army or a rabble, brawling here with your allies?’ He paused, and when Philippa suddenly took his arm, he did not shake it off. ‘You had a leader who betrayed you. He has answered to me, on behalf of all of you, for that. For the rest, the law, in M. d’Oisel’s hands, will act … is acting.’

Behind him, at last, their captain leading, d’Oisel’s troops were deploying, sword in hand, from the church. D’Oisel himself, his orders given, waited on in the choir. He waited until, under Lymond’s tongue, the impulse to violence died and his men came to a halt, uncertainly, eyeing each other and their officers, and those among them who had chosen Graham Malett to lead.

‘I am indebted,’ said M. d’Oisel abruptly. ‘And dumbfounded. I had thought it would be the work of many months to get these men once more under control.’

Lymond’s face was totally without colour. ‘You owe me nothing,’ he said. ‘Your duty, as you saw it, was to let Graham Malett escape. These men of St Mary’s know him now as a blaspheming impostor. If your men and mine had met in that race, Graham Malett’s death would have cost more than any one man is worth.… Let him go. I, too, have taken precautions. We may not stop him, but we may manage to keep track of him somehow.… We must.’

‘All the more I salute your most praiseworthy discipline. It is a warning though, is it not,’ said M. d’Oisel crisply, ‘of what might happen to such a tool as St Mary’s in the wrong hands?’

Something—what?—thought Jerott, about these words was familiar. Then he remembered. Long ago, in Malta, Lymond had said something of the sort to Graham Malett, speaking of the condition of the Order. ‘You are now what every sect potentially becomes when it loses leadership. A tool.’ He had recognized and taunted them with the weakness of the Order; but then in creating St Mary’s, had he not brought the same prospect of evil to his own country, with the same risk of other less able, less disinterested hands to guide them in future? A great and chivalrous Order, with their common religion to bind them, had become warped and debased in the hands of one corrupt Grand Master. Without those vows, those ideals, that spiritual discipline, how much more vulnerable was this force?

Some of this, in his dry, accented voice, d’Oisel was already saying. ‘You chose to fight your duel with Graham Malett here, in this land. You drew this great and ruinous power from Malta and brought its real nature to light.… Many lives have been lost, many souls disillusioned; many in rejecting Gabriel will also now reject all Gabriel professed. I do not say,’ said the King of France’s General,
his long face shadowed in the failing candles, ‘that you could have prevented Graham Malett from following you, or that if you had asked for help earlier you would have met with anything but disbelief. But this nucleus force, so brilliantly organized for quick expansion, was the weapon Malett would have used in the end against all of us, and possibly, too, against Malta.’

‘But he failed to use it,’ said Lymond quietly. ‘Because although we have men of religion among us, we use also other yardsticks of thought. I said once, I think, that the best thing the Order could do would be to offer the Osmanlis free passage and thereby force the warring countries of Christendom to unite. Had they not been smothered under the easy blanket of their vows, the Order should have learned that there is one thing more important by far than uniform piety … 
peace
.’