The Disorderly Knights

  Her colour high, she snatched at the ribbons again, and when she missed, flung down her brush. ‘I have tried. I went down to that arctic encampment to apologize, and had to wait three hours to see him. He said I impinged on his Happy Hour.’

  Startled, her brother loosed a shout of deep laughter. ‘His what?’

  ‘His Happy Hour. When he dries the tears of all the sad soldiers he chastised in the morning. Melancholy Man into Sanguine Man in an hour. He’s good, isn’t he?’ said Joleta suddenly, her eyes bright.

  Gabriel nodded, watching her.

  Aware of it, she bent, in a stirring of gauze, to retrieve her hairbrush and, straightening, met his gaze with her own. ‘Is the baby his?’

  There was a pause. Then Gabriel said, ‘It isn’t Cormac’s. That is certain. Nor is it de Césel’s: it must have been conceived in France, before the lady and the Governor met. My charming Francis’s behaviour in France last year was notorious, as you know; and Oonagh O’Dwyer was one of the favoured many. But even Cormac O’Connor, as jealous an unseated princeling as any I know, does not accuse her of being any other man’s mistress. Yes, the child is of Francis Crawford’s blood, and the only one, I suspect.… He has taught you a lesson, has he?’ said Gabriel gently. ‘That not everyone is prepared to be entranced?’

  Joleta sat upright, her blue eyes huge. ‘He is the most conceited.…’

  Gabriel laughed. ‘Because he finds your friendship so easy to resist? Your charms, sweetheart, are ageing, or you haven’t properly tried. Convert him for me,’ said Graham Malett, and leaning forward, slipped the lovely ribbon under her hair, and closing it round her throat, drew his sister forward and kissed her. ‘Convert him. But don’t, Joleta, tell him of Khaireddin out of pique. Or I shall be angry.’ And he kissed her again.

  It had been a hideous winter. In place of the normal season in Scotland, the weather stayed open only till December, when the last of the knights from Malta arrived.

  Then the frost came, from a metallurgical sky, and by dawn the last of the leaves, dry and fluted as walnuts, lay in unstirring heaps on the white roof of the forge.

  An oven cracked, and the man responsible was flogged, for Lymond had made his provisions against the weather, as against everything else. What he could not protect were the knights with their thin blood, coddled with long years of Mediterranean sun. Even Gabriel was livid with cold, out night after night training and being trained Until his child-like skin was roughened and raw with open sores, and his dry, calloused hands bled. In the end, since Gabriel himself would not, Adam Blacklock went to Lymond and said, ‘S-send me tonight. Sir Graham has had enough. In any case, he has nothing, surely, to learn about strategic night work.…’

  ‘Not in winter. Not in Scotland. Whereas you know about both; which is why you are not going. Has Sir Graham complained?’

  ‘No.’ Lymond, bright-edged at the top of his training, would be unaffected, thought Blacklock, if a new Ice Age arrived. He went on, his long, spaniel’s face expressionless, ‘He won’t refuse, until he comes down with pleurisy. And if he does, you’ll lose the goodwill of half of your men.’

  ‘So I might,’ said Lymond, taking thought. ‘But I understood his portable altar had the matter in hand.’

  The artist said nothing. Lymond, who was in his own room dressing to go out himself, paused, still holding the sword-belt Salablanca had handed him, and enveloped Adam Blacklock in an exceedingly shrewd blue gaze. ‘But you don’t think it a good idea,’ he added.

  ‘On several counts.… No,’ said Blacklock.

  ‘Well, thank God it was you,’ said Lymond. ‘If Jerott Blyth had brought me the self-same appeal I should have been strongly tempted to kick him out by the window. As it is, you may tell Sir Graham, Jerott, the other officers and as many of the camp as may care to take notice, that we les executeurs de la justice de Dieu hereby exempt the Chevalier from night exercises from now onwards, and from all other protracted training in the field. Plummer will lead tonight.’

  ‘He won’t like that,’ said Adam drily. ‘Lancelot likes his comforts.’

  ‘Then he will require to place the blame, won’t he,’ said Lymond encouragingly, ‘where the blame is due?’

  The changed conditions, though a matter of bitter self-recriminations by Graham Malett himself, led to an instant improvement in his well-being, and the hard training did the rest to restore the tone he had lost since leaving Malta. With the challenge to his endurance withdrawn he also felt able, for the first time, to leave St Mary’s as he had expected to do from time to time, to visit Joleta and Torphichen and establish some sort of centre at his chambers in Edinburgh.

  Sometimes his absences were protracted as the weather grew worse, for by Christmas the snows had come, unusually heavy, and lay for nearly a month, renewing the white and grey landscape by foggy blizzards over the hills. Then sharp winds came and scooped the snow to its brown bracken bed, piling the rest in crusty drifts over cottage and tree. The training at St Mary’s became practical exercises in rescue work, and the army made friends it was to keep through the summer. In January, in a snatch of open weather, Joleta came, defiant with her olive branch, followed by Madame Donati and a strong force from Midculter, where she was staying once more; to be spurned, as she was later to record.

  It was one of the few occasions when Jerott Blyth fell out openly with his leader. Jerott had spent an upsetting winter. As a professional, he could not deceive himself or anyone else about the quality of Lymond’s work. Nor could he deny that in his personal dislike of the man, he had let Gabriel down. Gabriel had sent him ahead to be his missionary, and had come to find the territory in command of the heathen, and all the spadework waiting for himself. It drove Jerott frantic to see Gabriel place himself under another man’s direction, and to suffer so mildly what seemed to Jerott a crude and deliberate victimization as well.

  It was Gabriel who pointed out that only the hardest of training would bring him back to the point where he could hope to carry weight in such an army; and as his prodigious talents proclaimed themselves, it was obvious that not even Lymond would expect any of them—Guthrie, Hoddim, Bell, Tait, Blacklock or Plummer, far less any of his own Knights of the Order—to regard Graham Malett as a fellow-pupil. Nor, to do him justice, had Lymond ever attempted the role of Grand Master here. He had allotted to Gabriel the tasks he needed for training, and the places where his expertise would be of use to the rest of the force. The other Knights of St John, who knew his methods already, were kept apart.

  In theory, that is. In practice, whenever Gabriel was at St Mary’s, the knights met for Mass, and for the gentler exercises of their vows; and their fellow sufferers, from conviction or curiosity, quite often came too.

  Lymond was not told, but neither would Gabriel allow the serenity of the meeting to become the occasion for backbiting about their high-handed commander. Any unfortunate critic of Lymond, on the contrary, was liable to have a lecture from Graham Malett, an unaccustomed sharpness in his magnificent voice, until the complainant closed his ears in despair.

  Gabriel himself had patience without end. Sophisticated Plummer the architect, hovering on the edge of the Faith, could expose, red-faced and drawling, his most secret dismays, and be treated levelly and with punctilio, as he craved. Randy Bell, afraid to confess the meetings in the byre that followed many a humane sick-visit round St Mary’s, found there was no need: that Gabriel knew, and was tolerant. Hercules Tait, a collector first, a traveller and ambassador’s secretary second, found a quiet listener to his catalogue of treasures, and unexpectedly, from Gabriel’s worn baggage, was given an ikon from some Turkish hoard to add to it. And Adam Blacklock, hovering by the chapel door when his marred leg hurt, was found at length and made, in Gabriel’s room, to take a drink.

  Recoiling from the raw spirit, coughing, the artist had said, ‘No, Sir Graham … I know it would help, but I’ve no head for it. Mr Crawford simply sends Abernethy to rub it, when the leg gets as bad as this.…’
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  But already the aqua-vitæ was glowing in his stomach, and he couldn’t keep the appeal from his voice. Without speaking, Gabriel had poured out and handed him the rest of the drink, and had kept the lame man beside him until the effects had worn off that night, fibbing cheerfully when Lymond sent for him later. In the morning, seeing him off, Gabriel had said quietly, ‘You are right. Spirit is risky. But there must be other drugs that would help. Come to me tonight, and any time that it’s bad, and we shall see if Randy Bell and I can’t find you something better than Abernethy’s horny hands, skilful and hardworking though they are.’

  Only Fergie Hoddim’s love of legal analyses sometimes drove Malett to mock despair, and Fergie would wait for Lymond who would say instantly, before he could speak, ‘I don’t want the detail. I want the broad argument and the answer,’ and force him to produce just that.

  Alec Guthrie strained nobody’s patience. With everyone in turn—sometimes with Gabriel, sometimes with Lymond—he would produce his premise, and sit back and wait for the argument. Then, with the subject closed to his satisfaction, he would pack up whatever impressions his acute eyes had been gathering, and slip off. After the first occasion, he attended no services but if Blacklock was sketching he could often be found, in silence, watching the chalk.

  Jerott Blyth indeed fell over them when, storming indoors after seeing Joleta off on the day of her visit, he found the artist cross-legged in the hall, finishing the sketch he had made during her long watt for Lymond. Jerott was in a temper, and made no secret of it. When he paused for sheer absence of breath, Alec Guthrie, nearby on a stool, broke prosaically in.

  ‘She’s not quite royalty, Jerott. She came without warning, and it was her misfortune that her brother was away and Lymond primed down to belabouring mercenaries and not to being polite. What the devil did she have to make such a fuss about apologizing for, anyway?’

  Jerott, striding up and down kicking, did not reply. Gabriel’s sister had come through the snowy hills in her small cavalcade, mired with slush from their own horses’ hooves, and had sought, flushed, ravishing and dripping, a kind word from Lymond.

  He had sent word for her to wait. Certainly, she had been made comfortable, with a room for herself and Madame Donati to change in, and chicken and sweetmeats brought steaming to them before the roaring fire. The men of St Mary’s, embarrassed, enchanted; grinning at her; recalling, shamefaced, the day she had shot at them on the road, had personally seen to that. But Jerott could not forget her dismay when Lymond’s message arrived, nor the moment when Plummer, the fool, had said, ‘He’s shooting, against de Seurre and Tait and some of the men, in the snow. Can you see them? This window gives a good view.’ And she watched, silent and hot-cheeked still, while M. le bloody Comte did everything but grow runner beans on his bow, and you could see the Venetian woman smiling at the girl’s back and then round the room as if the child were some doting moppet of ten.

  But all the same, when Lymond came in, bright, wet and imperviously cheerful, there was a look in her eyes that Jerott had not seen before, and her confidence, her quick-witted defensiveness, had gone. Jerott had time to think, ‘On my soul, she can’t have enjoyed the roughening-up he gave her? What possible glamour is there in that?’ And then Joleta’s voice, its sibilants so childishly marked, said purposefully, ‘I wish to apologize for—for …’ And, her courage deserting her in the presence of Blacklock, Plummer, Guthrie, and Jerott himself, she became speechless almost at once.

  It was never a failing of Lymond’s. ‘For trying to trade on your brother’s reputation? I accept the apology, although as I understood the situation, once I had thrashed you we were even. However. And surely Madame Donati hasn’t come all this way merely to chaperone you through that? Or is she to be our vivandière?’

  There was an explosive sound from Mr Plummer, and Madame Donati became yellow. ‘Believe me, Mr Crawford, I am here through no wish of mine,’ said Joleta’s duenna. ‘After your disgusting behaviour at Boghall, I think the child is a saint.’

  ‘No, no. Her brother’s the saint,’ said Lymond. ‘Look at Mr Blyth, standing like Mohammed receiving the revelations: he’ll tell you. The girl has a temper. Look out; she’ll tear her dollies to bits. Joleta dear, you are forgiven. Go home now, will you? The gentlemen are busy.’

  Alec Guthrie, observant on his stool beside the sketching Blacklock, did not move, but Plummer, casting up his elegant brows, made at this point a graceful departure and Madame Donati, blotched with anger, gripped Joleta’s elbow. Joleta did not move, but simply stared, her sea-blue eyes pellucid with unshed tears; then lowering her head so that the golden hair swung over her breast, she let the duenna walk her to the door.

  Lymond followed, talking unabashed, and after a moment Jerott strode out as well and seizing Joleta by the arm as, wrapped again in her snow-sodden cloak, she looked down from her mare, said, ‘We don’t deserve such a charming visitor. There is no need for you to go. Mr Crawford does not mean to be serious. There is a bedroom you and the Madonna may willingly have until at least your brother comes back to stay.’

  There was a distinct pause. ‘Then it must be yours, dear man,’ said Lymond’s voice with deceptive mildness. ‘For there is none other in the castle that I know of.’

  ‘All right. It is mine,’ said Jerott shortly. ‘Let me help you down, Mistress Malett?’ And he held out his arm again.

  ‘But I’m afraid you are in your chamber tonight,’ said Lymond’s voice deprecatingly. ‘Didn’t I tell you? To make amends for contradicting my orders. And three in a bed, Brother, is a touch overcrowded.’

  He and Jerott stared at one another. Then Lymond added, the gentleness gone from his voice, ‘We are not in St Angelo now. Mistress Malett has to ride a mere two miles to reach the home of some very good friends of mine who have agreed to put her up for the night. It is, on the whole, more respectable than retiring in a camp of armed men. It also leads to trouble among the said armed men, not all of whom are Knights of St John. Ask Randy Bell.’

  It was then that Jerott turned on his heel and strode inside; and in due course Alec Guthrie showed him the uselessness at least of pursuing the matter with Lymond. Lymond himself did not again mention it, having already decided what course to pursue with the Chevalier Jerott Blyth. Only, in St Mary’s itself, during her brief and unfortunate stay, the child Joleta had perhaps made more friends than she knew.

  Then the snows came back, and the burns ran in spate hissing and bubbling under rimed ice, and there was, said Wat Scott of Buccleuch —square as a Tartar in a beaver-lined cloak, with a private fog in his curly grey beard—a damned yowe staring eye to eye with him through a second-floor window when he put his feet on the carpet this morning.

  *

  It was Buccleuch whom Lymond relied on, or rather Will Scott his son, when the freeze-up went on, without precedent, into March, and their fuel began to run out. Organized by Gabriel, newly with them after long absence enforced by the snow and Lord St John, the stocks of peat and firewood in the big, tarred-canvas stores outside St Mary’s were freely drawn on to supply emergency fuel to the darkened farms and cottages around.

  Lives were saved, but the heavy depletion, with no reserve for the future, left St Mary’s itself in hazard and, driving himself to the utmost, Gabriel had taken no time to find other supplies. Even Jerott Blyth, informed one wintry morning by Tosh, whom he still disliked, of the sudden major withdrawal of stocks, was unprepared for the dark emptiness of the sheds. Gabriel had left early and would not be back until late; Lymond was away until at least tomorrow. Jerott, without comment, rolled up his sleeves and with des Roches’s help worked out a temporary and drastic schedule of rations, while his spirit ached for Gabriel and his well-meaning alms.

  It was an instance of the Hospitaller triumphing over the man of war for which it was impossible to blame Graham Malett. But out in every weather, using to the last trained ounce their skill and strength, two hundred and thirty men needed hot food and warm
th when they came in from the bitter night; or they would go where they could get it. Despite the shallow coalition each had achieved, there was no doubt that on Lymond’s return, Mammon and the Christian code of the knights were due to collide.

  Francis Crawford came back that evening, unexpectedly, striding soaked, vigorous, sardonically cheerful, out of the snowy night into a cold and virtually lightless house. In the middle of his own hall he stopped, divested himself slowly of the last of his riding clothes and handed them to Salablanca. The group of senior commanders hugging the feeble fire moved apart silently, and got up.

  The uncomfortable blue eyes swept them. Without moving, Lymond said, ‘Jerott? When I left you last week, there was adequate fuel and lighting to last until summer.’

  Jerott Blyth stood up, the smoky glow outlining his splendid black head, and said, without a glance at his fellows, ‘It was reported to me this morning that stocks were quite low. I have cut supplies until we have more. The details are on your desk, if you will come and look at them.’

  ‘You will show them to me in a moment, here. I want the gentleman you are protecting, whoever he is, to know all about it. Meanwhile, would anyone care to say why we now have no fuel?’

  There was a heavy silence. Then, ‘Because of God’s holy charity,’ said Gabriel’s voice unexpectedly; and Graham Malett himself stood in the doorway, his blanched face seamed with tiredness and cold, and the melted ice from his clothes in a pool at his feet.

  De Seurre leaped forward, one hand outstretched, but Gabriel shook his head at a proffered chair and spoke to Lymond, one hand gripping the door-curtain hard. ‘Do you know what is happening, out there in the countryside? The woman whose baby you protected the night of the horse-chase is dead, and the child likely to die. Effie Harperfield is lying in bed day and night with the children in her arms, getting up to feed them cold gruel and bacon. They have no fuel and only enough light saved to let the priest give the Last Sacraments when the oldest child dies: she is coughing her lungs up already.’