Beside him, Juan de Homedès’s stiff walk had not faltered, but in the flare of the porters’ cressets his face looked a little severe. ‘There is no obligation on the Order to ransom this man,’ he said at last. ‘The boat is the responsibility of the Viceroy of Sicily, not ours.’
The French Ambassador waited a moment, then said reasonably, ‘I gather that no seamen of the Viceroy’s would take the risk. This boat, which had nothing to gain but a little money, was manned by a Scotsman.’
‘A Scots fisherman in the Mediterranean?’ said the Grand Master lightly. ‘You astonish me.’
And by then, M. d’Aramon was fairly certain that the Grand Master was perfectly familiar with the identity of the captain who had taken the biggest gamble any Christian could: who had sailed into the hands of the Turks so that the misleading letter should fall into their hands. ‘His name is Thompson,’ said d’Aramon, with no hope of the Grand Master but a sudden very strong conviction of his own.
‘The Scottish pirate! Dear me, M. d’Aramon, you speak of a man who deserves all the chastisement that this life or the next may provide. He is the scourge of the Order. I cannot count the number of times he has raided ships of the Religion.’
‘He plunders us all,’ said d’Aramon patiently. ‘He none the less saved Mdina and most likely Malta that day.’
‘A small remittance which will barely cover the least of his sins. No, no,’ said the Grand Master, preceding d’Aramon into his chamber and signing him to be seated. ‘I have much more serious affairs to discuss with you tonight. Here, in the privacy of this room, I must tell you what has reached my ears from the survivors of Gozo. We may not hope that the heathen, having done his worst, is sailing, distended with Christian blood, to his master at the Porte. No. Sinan Pasha, Dragut Rais and the Turkish fleet have gone to their real objective, Sir Ambassador; and their real objective is the taking of Tripoli.
‘Therefore,’ said the Grand Master of the Order of St John, standing old, tall and noble in his ancient office over Gabriel d’Aramon’s head, ‘Therefore in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of the monarch your master who glories in the title of the Most Christian King, I must ask you to sail forthwith to Tripoli and to dissuade this wild and sinful pagan from his design. You, by virtue of your office, have been compelled to acquaint yourself with this vicious race,’ said Juan de Homedès sternly. ‘It is open to you now to make godly use of the commerce with which you have soiled your hands. Go to the heathen, sir, and order them to desist.’
*
Years of intrigue in his native France; years of exile as military attaché to the French Ambassador at Venice; years at the Porte, travelling all over Asia Minor in the Sultan’s train, bickering over rights in Jerusalem and enticing concessions from viziers, had made the Baron d’Aramon’s political senses very sharp. Long before this ominous walk with the Grand Master he had put in hand, discreetly, an inquiry among the soldiers, the mercenaries, the Maltese, to find out what really had happened at Mdina and Gozo, with no successes at all.
His train was big. Henri of France, ashamed perhaps at last of the treatment d’Aramon had received at home in return for long and painstaking service, had made him a Gentleman of the Bedchamber before he left and had given him two of the best-equipped galleys in the fleet, with Michel de Seurre, Knight of the Order, to accompany him in his galliot. Besides his own relatives and his captains, there were several noblemen, several Gascon gentlemen, the King’s secretary, and three men who knew the Eastern Mediterranean as well as he did; of whom one was Nicolas de Nicolay, royal cosmographer to France and de Villegagnon’s friend.
It was just before the famous dinner that the French Ambassador, courteously supervised into aseptic seclusion, called de Seurre and de Nicolay to him and said, shutting the door, ‘I am a little mystified by what has happened here. We are not to be allowed, it seems, to ask questions in Birgu, and I will not ask M. de Villegagnon or his friends to betray their vows. But M. de Villegagnon has with him an independent observer, a Scotsman named Crawford.’
‘I know him,’ said de Seurre equably. ‘He has a reputation in Scotland. A man of eccentricity.’
‘I thought you had met,’ said d’Aramon, relieved. ‘M. de Villegagnon tells me that this Scottish gentleman is at present in hospital. The reason is not clear. It may even be,’ said the Ambassador without stress, ‘that the patient is not sick and does not wish to be in hospital. However that may be, it would be fitting if you were to visit him.’
‘Would we be admitted?’ The geographer’s elf-like face jammed freakishly into ruts of perplexity, and he ran his hand through his short, rough grey hair.
It stuck up, and M. d’Aramon eyed him thoughtfully. He had chosen M. de Seurre because he knew from de Villegagnon that he had been on the Scots campaign, and because he was a Knight of the Order of St John of an absolute integrity. He had chosen the geographer because he knew Scotland, because he was endlessly inquisitive and a shrewd judge of character, and because he was the kind of innocent enthusiast who could get himself into (and out of) any corner he chose.
The Ambassador opened his mouth; but before he answered, Nicolas de Nicolay struck himself on the chest—an appalling blow, for he was a very little man—and reeling briefly in a circle with his knees bent, fell on his spine to the carpet with a thud that made his chair jump. As the others leaped to their feet, he lifted his head like a handle and said, ‘I perish, mes amis. There is one hope only. The hospital!’
‘You fool,’ said de Scurre impatiently. ‘They’d find out in five minutes. Get up. We are not children.’
‘You are not children,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, sitting up to rub his bruised shoulder blades and then lying down again. ‘But me, I am a child of Nature. Not for me the chastity, nor the poverty. And particularly, I do not obey.’
‘That,’ said M. d’Aramon, temperately amused, ‘is obvious. Rise. If we must do this thing, let us do it—’
‘With artistry,’ said the geographer. ‘With élan. And most meticulously charted.’
*
The Ambassador’s guess had been predictably accurate. Lymond, conveniently for the Grand Master, was in the hospital. Inconveniently for the Grand Master, he was not ill.
Returning to Mdina after that impossible race to reach Gozo, both he and Jerott Blyth had been exhausted to the point of blindness by fatigue and heat. It had been a dogged test of endurance, achieved in wordless anger on both sides. Blyth by then was far too sensitive on Gabriel’s behalf to see the absurdity of the thing, and Lymond, who probably saw it only too well, was having enough trouble keeping on his feet, considering that Jerott’s stone had laid open the side of his head. Arrived uncertainly at Mdina, both were taken to the old hospital for the night and Jerott woke fully restored in time to accompany de Villegagnon and Gabriel back to Birgu.
Lymond, he learned with mixed feelings, had had a disturbed night and was still asleep. His state of mind was not helped by Gabriel who, visiting his rare anger on the unfortunate Blyth before he was well awake, had berated him thoroughly for his carelessness.
‘How else was I to stop him?’ Jerott had snapped. It was he, not Gabriel, who had worn himself out on that uncomfortable race.
‘You might have killed him,’ said Gabriel sharply, and turning his back strode away; from which Jerott received the comfort of knowing that logic was on his side, and Gabriel merely giving unusual outlet to his own anxiety. They set out, with Lymond still under care in the hospital behind them, and the people of Mdina ran at their stirrups and kissed their feet. Later, Jerott heard that Francis Crawford had been brought from Mdina by the Grand Master’s orders and installed in the big hospital at Birgu, but he was not allowed any visitors, and even Gabriel was turned from the door. De Villegagnon, on Malett’s advice, did not try. Nicolas de Nicolay, however, not only tried but succeeded.
The entire hospital was worried about Nicolas de Nicolay. In his first hour in the knights’ ward he received visits from th
e Infirmarian, the Prior, the duty physician, the assistant duty physician, the surgeon, the barber-surgeon and two barberotti. No one knew what was wrong with him. With two hundred other sick, wounded and dying to care for, the hospital was conscious of other calls on its conscience, but could not wrest its nervous attention from the celebrated patient who, if harm befell him, would do the Order’s reputation more harm than Dragut’s galleys.
Nicolas, disregarding freely all d’Aramon’s strictures about moderation, plunged into display like a mountebank. He screamed. He rolled about in evident agony. He clutched his stomach, his throat, flung hash at the curtains and upset soup on the novices. He wouldn’t take his medicine and shrieked for de Seurre, who came to see him at regular intervals, by every conceivable route, but without discovering a trace of the missing Lymond.
After half a day of it, de Seurre brought news. ‘You’d better give up the farce and recover,’ he said, sitting impatiently holding the geographer’s limp hand. ‘We are going to Tripoli. The Ambassador has agreed to intercede with the Turk.’
Nicolas de Nicolay’s brown eyes snapped. ‘But the scraping-down of the boats, surely, isn’t finished? And they will require time to water and provision.’ Galleys, weed-coated, were having much-needed attention.
‘D’Aramon will go in the Order’s own light brigantine. The galliot remains. When the two galleys are ready, we follow.’
Nicolas de Nicolay sank back on his pillow and let out a mechanical yelp as an orderly passed. ‘Then there’s no immediate haste.’
The Chevalier de Seurre said irritably, ‘You have the Ambassador’s permission to abandon the search. It is not of importance.’ It was not a business he relished. Of course, something was irregular; you could smell it, as d’Aramon had done. He appreciated the tact with which d’Aramon had refused to make this inquiry behind his back: as one of his party, it would have been intolerable. But he was afraid of what he was going to find.
And he had a shrewd idea, too, that the little, elderly geographer suspected it. For Nicolas de Nicolay said firmly, ‘Turn my back on a new chart? Never!’ and fell asleep. Or for all practical purposes became quite unresponsive. At length, as the siesta hour had begun, de Seurre went away out of patience. The hospital, relieved of its jumping nerve, settled down to sleep and routine, as long as its difficult patient’s slumber would permit; and Nicolas de Nicolay, breathing heavily, waited bubbling for the hour when the quiet ward would be vacant of monks, and when a man in search of natural relief might find himself by mistake in several strange places.
When the moment came he rose, stuffed his pillow into his bed, and lifting the black cloak from beside the sleeping knight in the next bed, shrugged into it and shuffled off in the semi-dark of the veiled windows. Then, as was his business, he began to explore.
The mortuary of the hospital of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem was dug from the rock of Birgu: a cold, sweating rectangle, small and unwindowed, with a single taper burning below the crucifix on the walls. There on pallets of scrubbed wood the dead lay; and the priests of the Order, in their piety, strapped each corpse to its bed with thongs of leather, bound on the dead ankles and wrists and so wired that the slightest twitch of the dead limbs would set a bell trembling. So for twenty-four hours after death the knights lay, that no living body should be interred.
It was the last station on the geographer’s lighthearted journey, and by the time he pushed the unlocked door open and pattered into the gloom, he had sobered a little. The person Crawford was not in any of the wards. He was not among the infectious, the wounded or the dying; he was not convalescing in the garden or under the knife. He was nowhere in the hospital, unless here.
And there, poor young man, he was. Nicolas de Nicolay closed the mortuary door silently and moved past the empty boards to the one which was occupied. Colourless in the gloom, the leather bands crossed at feet and wristbones, the corpse was undoubtedly the man of d’Aramon’s and de Seurre’s description. De Nicolay, a man of sentiment, swore carefully, and the corpse, interested, opened its eyes.
‘Diable de diable de diable,’ said the little geographer, with even more feeling, and with great formality bowed. ‘Nicolas de Nicolay, come with d’Aramon’s fleet, mon cher. So this is where they hide you? So able!’
‘Quite. Plûtot souffrir que mourir; c’est la devise des hommes,’ said Francis Crawford, unmoving. ‘Vive le Corps Diplomatique and all its friends; but for God’s sake don’t sneeze, will you? These bells are strung up so that they hear the moment I wake.’
‘So that they may put you to sleep again, eh? You must have cramp,’ said Nicolas with modest insight.
‘I have,’ said the other man. ‘But if you—’
‘—Stuff the clappers with my cloak, all will be well. Certainly. And now,’ said the barefooted geographer, settling himself comfortably on the next pallet and closing his round eyes, ‘Tell me all that the Grand Master is so anxious that no one shall know.’
Time was short; but it was enough. Succinct and damning, the story of avidity, incompetence, neglect and useless sacrifice was told. In the end, the Frenchman said thoughtfully, ‘They do not kill you, for they do not wish a de Guise inquiry; and they are men of God, let us not forget. They merely silence you till we have gone, and thus buy a little time. What good will this do?’
‘It will allow them to spread counter-stories abroad,’ said Lymond. Reclining, ghost-like in white muslin, he was methodically rubbing life back into his cramped limbs. ‘Already the Governor of Gozo has died on the ramparts. In a week, the Order will have manned and swept the Turk from Mdina, and sunk Dragut between Gozo and home.’
‘Remind me to tell you about a Scot called Thompson,’ said de Nicolay. ‘And you are a little behind with the news. Sinan Pasha and Dragut haven’t gone home. They have sailed to Tripoli, and M. d’Aramon and I—and a few others—are to follow and advise him against it. At the Grand Master’s suggestion.’
‘When?’
‘Lie down. You frighten me,’ said Nicolas. ‘Today, in the Order’s brigantine; but the rest of us follow, tomorrow possibly. Come with us. The Grand Master cannot stop you, and it may be your only chance to tell your story outside.… Tell me,’ he said, his gnome-like face lit with sudden enthusiasm, ‘are you not, you, the person who prevented the English soldiers following our little princess Mary of Scots, when M. de Villegagnon brought her safely from Scotland to France? A voyage of galleys round the wild north of Scotland, which these boats had never attempted before?’
Diverted, Lymond looked up. ‘I had something to do with it.’
‘I hear from M. de Villegagnon, who is my friend,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay with satisfaction. ‘The chart he used for this great voyage, I supplied.’
‘A chart of the north coast of Scotland?’ The tone was, recognizably, a shade too sweet.
‘But no,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, giving up. ‘But even better. It was made by your pilot Alec Lindsé for the voyage of your dead King James V, and fell into the hands of Lord Dudley, Admiral of England. The Admiral,’ said Nicolas modestly, ‘gifted this so fine chart to me five years ago. Later, when it was a case of tricking the English to get your little Queen away … I sent it to my King for M. de Villegagnon.’
‘And so the Earl of Warwick,’ said Lymond, beginning to laugh, ‘was really responsible for Queen Mary’s escape.’
‘Yes. It is very funny, but I am cold. If we disturb our toes,’ said the geographer, ‘the bells will agitate—I shall unchoke them thus—and we shall be discovered, to great alarm. We shall be most hurt and most reproving, but what can they do to us but free us, as if all were in error? They cannot harm Nicolas de Nicolay,’ said that gentleman with the utmost cheerfulness. ‘Nor, now that you have told me all, are you in danger in my company. Come! Agitate the toes!’
They agitated their toes until the door opened and the aghast and ashen countenance of the mortician appeared.
The two white-robed figures on the pale sl
abs did not interrupt their conversation. ‘I’m glad, in a way,’ Lymond said. ‘I couldn’t quite bring myself to attack them, lunatics that they are.’
‘You are sentimental,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay complacently. ‘But the tender stomach does not attack the pure—no—not even the pure in stupidity.’
*
Presently, when incoherent explanation and apology had been brushed aside and the Hospitallers, to their own relief, found themselves, if heavily mocked, at least unmolested by their victim and his rescuer, Lymond took leave of the geographer and, dressed once more in his own clothes, made straight for Gabriel’s house.
Graham Malett, motionless before the shabby altar, did not hear him enter, or stand waiting by the door. At length he rose and genuflected, and turning, the cross half-gestured on his breast, saw Francis Crawford.
All movement stopped. His face, already serene from prayer, gathered light, and so transparent a joy that Jerott Blyth, striding after the half-glimpsed newcomer, stopped at the door. ‘Thank God,’ said Gabriel, and switched his tone, instantly, to an ironic apology. ‘I suppose our mistakes are now proclaimed to the world?’
‘Of course,’ said Lymond. ‘But why else did you make sure that M. d’Aramon found out where I was?’
‘You learned that, did you?’ The open face for a moment showed its fatigue. ‘Jerott … come in. He is back, as bloody-minded as ever, I suspect. I desire,’ he said abruptly to Lymond, ‘to call you Francis. Is that permitted? It is out of affection and a … purely spiritual love.’
At the unexpected half-tone of mischief, even Lymond’s blue stare relaxed. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Then you forgive me what I have done on behalf of the Order?’ said Graham Malett quickly. ‘I could not let you go to Gozo.’
‘It makes no difference,’ said Lymond, after a moment. Then with an apparent effort he added, ‘I am going to Tripoli.’