Mary of Guise, taller than most women, stood, and looked up at him as he rose. ‘Good,’ she said drily. ‘Excellent. Then we shall have you with us, it seems, for some considerable time.’
*
Gabriel was still absent at Falkland when, following a string of small and estimable engagements, Lymond set out for the west, a full quarter of his company behind him, to join the pirate Thompson at last. With him he took the Moor Salablanca, Jerott, Alec Guthrie, Adam Blacklock, Fergie Hoddim and Abernethy. De Seurre and des Roches, practised seamen, were left at St Mary’s, as also were Bell the doctor, Plummer and Tait.
Jerott, pointing out without modesty his own expertise, was told briefly that he was there as a tutor. Bell, who turned up unexpectedly at Greenock, was nearly sent back, but after explaining, red-faced, that there was a woman in Ireland he had in mind to visit, he was allowed to go, and Fergie Hoddim sent back in his place. Then they took a boat north-west, out of the mouth of the Clyde, and into the appointed place in the loch-ridden estuary, off the north end of the island of Bute, where Tamsín’s roomy big merchantman, the Magdalena, was waiting.
The weather was good and Jerott, who had enjoyed the last few weeks, was grimly cheerful. As always, Gabriel’s wise presence, his piety and gentle humour, and his infallible instincts in the field had been missed every day. The sharper discipline, the glittering tempo, of Lymond’s handling was however a challenge that he liked, although on some the confident, cutting intelligence grated. Lymond made no concessions, to Tait, to Hoddim, to Plummer. At St Mary’s he treated them as adults, and equal. In the field he demanded unquestioning obedience and got it, now, even from Alec Guthrie, with no arguments until later. Only the artist Blacklock, quietly mutinous, had begun to drink, and went on with it, in muddled defiance, in spite of warnings. When he began, obviously, to add to this some sort of drug, Lymond turned him out.
He didn’t go. In silence, grim with embarrassment, the other officers of St Mary’s went about their business aware of Adam Black-lock, his shaking hands locked together, sitting before the empty grate, alone with nothing to do; wandering through the stables, touching the horses, or standing, biting his lip, watching his friends as they shot.
At the end of the first day he went to bed as usual, but without his drugs, and woke shouting, his face like a child’s. Bell got to him quickly, holding him down, but Jerott went straight for Lymond.
There was no need to wake him. Lymond was still up, fully dressed, and Archie Abernethy with him. As Jerott began to speak, he heard Abernethy slip out, and in a moment he returned. Salablanca was behind him, with Blacklock in his arms. Then Jerott was sent away.
What happened in Lymond’s room Jerott never knew; but next day the artist was back among them, paper-white but reasonably steady, and daily he improved. Taking him to sea was less, Jerott guessed, a staple in his training than a realistic acceptance of the fact that he never let Lymond, if he could help it, out of his sight. According to Randy Bell, grinning, it was because Lymond and Archie Abernethy between them were doubling his supply of drugs. In Jerott’s own mind, it was another step in Lymond’s battle to eclipse Gabriel. And since the machine was more and more engaging his interest, he opened the subject on the way to the west coast. ‘Satisfy my curiosity. If you dislike him so, why did you bring Graham Malett from Malta? And if you are intent on outstripping him, why make no effort to supplant him in Malta? Until the last weeks, he tried to protect the Grand Master. You could have led a pretty revolt, had you wished.’
Lymond turned a solemn blue eye in his direction. Filing through the low hill passes north and west, the company was well strung out, with their scouts on all sides as a matter of course; and Alec Guthrie had been given the lead, freeing Lymond to move as he wished. Riding, at present, a little to one side of his men at arms and out of earshot, Lymond had a perfect opportunity to explain, if he cared.
And apparently he did, for after a moment he said, the laughter plain now in his voice, ‘It’s a tempting piece of analysis, Jerott. If I were as bloody jealous of our friend Gabriel in Malta as I appear to be here, what should I have done to supplant him …? All right. What? Not oppose the Grand Master, for one thing. But the opposite. Infiltrate at the top, my dear. I should have made the Grand Master my indispensable friend.’
‘You couldn’t,’ said Jerott bluntly. ‘Juan de Homedès has truck with Spanish knights only.’
‘Then,’ said Lymond cheerfully, ‘I should have treated him to my well-known imitation of a Spanish knight and, having gained his confidence, I should begin to throw doubts on both the sanctity of friend Gabriel’s aims, and the quality of his leadership. And since no breath of criticism, of course, has ever touched him in either respect, evidence would have to be manufactured.’
‘How?’ said Jerott.
Lymond glanced at him. ‘It isn’t difficult to make someone look incompetent,’ he said. ‘If you really try. Recall how Sir Graham looked at Christmas, for example, when he ran us out of fuel supplies.’ ‘But—’ Jerott began.
‘That wasn’t his fault, you were about to say. Exactly,’ said Lymond, amused. ‘Further, his friends must be suborned. Yourself, for example. If you had a weakness, which God knows you have not, I should pander to it, until you relied on me and no one but me.’
‘Like Adam Blacklock?’ said Jerott.
‘Maybe,’ said Lymond; but not quite so readily this time, Jerott happily noted, and the sidelong glance was pretty sharp. But he resumed, none the less. ‘All right. I have undermined the confidence of his chief, his professional reputation, the regard of his friends. I take two other steps. I cast doubt on the purity of his morals, and I engage him and his friends in some activity detrimental to the Master’s welfare.’
‘But—’
‘But his morals are impeccable, so we have to slip a nun into his bed and get him, perhaps, to do something faintly reprehensible to help a friend.’
‘Like helping to police a parcel of English whores?’ said Jerott.
‘Perhaps. And finally,’ said Lymond, with care, ‘I should have consolidated my position as the Grand Master’s right-hand man by getting rid of all rivals, or setting them at each other’s throats, so that when the dust died away I should be sitting in the Grand Master’s lodging at Birgu, invulnerable.’
‘But you did none of this,’ said Jerott. ‘In Malta, you stood aside and watched. Why?’
Lymond, reined in to move along the line, looked back. ‘Another time, Torquemada.’
A new voice said, ‘No. I should like to know too.’ And Adam Blacklock rode between them.
Speculatively, Lymond looked from Blacklock to Blyth. ‘I see. How much of that did you hear?’
‘All of it. Why didn’t you fight on Malta? I thought you did.’
‘I thought I did too. Jerott means, why didn’t I throw over Juan de Homedès single-handed. The answer is, Jerott, that I went as an observer for France. And on my own account I wished to see the workings of your faith.’
Jerott’s black brows were level. ‘Rubbish. Or why turn from it now? You know why Gabriel is really here. You know why he persists against all the bloody insolence and heartache to win you. Would you fight at his side, then, to recover Malta?’
Across Blacklock’s silent head, Lymond’s gaze was turned full on the importunate friend of his boyhood. ‘Did Malett direct you to ask that?’
‘No,’ said Jerott with anger. ‘He didn’t. I should still like an answer. Would you?’
‘When Gabriel asks me,’ said Lymond, ‘I shall tell him.’ He looked, to Blacklock’s eyes, suddenly tired, but Jerott, heedless, noticed nothing. He opened his mouth but Lymond, smiling a little, forestalled him.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that what will save Malta is a great and selfless leader, and a man of faith.’
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. Som
ewhere, 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 Lym
ond 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.