The Disorderly Knights

  Then the young man at the door, the grey blindness still in his face, said, ‘I couldn’t stop her. She should have stayed.’ And realizing, perhaps, from the altered expression of Gabriel’s face that he was making frightening nonsense, Jerott made a sharp and visible effort, his hands cramped to his thighs, and said, ‘Could you spare a moment, Sir Graham? Your sister is with me, but she is not.…’

  He was saying ‘well’ when Joleta Malett, walking slowly, dreamlike in fatigue, came and stood by his side. Above the furred cloak she wore, its muddied hem dragging the ground, her face was pale as a windflower and misted with fine sweat. Her long hair, a tangled skein on one shoulder, was bronzed with it. ‘You haven’t told him,’ she said.

  Her voice was reasonable, and just a little higher in pitch than was usual. Jerott said, ‘We shall tell him together, when he is alone. You mustn’t worry him here. Come to his room.’

  ‘No.’ Although addressing Jerott, Joleta’s filmed pale blue eyes were fixed on her brother. She said, ‘Tell him.’

  There were two steps down from the dais. Graham Malett took them in one stride, and was halfway towards them when Joleta cried out. ‘No! Stay where you are. I want every man of them to know!’

  ‘Joleta!’ said Blyth desperately. She was unfit to travel. She should never have come. He had been through hell with her and then through worse than hell, anticipating this moment. He had carried her in his arms through the night from Midculter and she had said over and over, ‘I will tell them all. I will tell them all. They will all know what he has made of me.’ Sick with loathing, sick with revulsion after shouting, in the midst of his shock, at the useless duenna, raging over the absence of Sybilla and Richard Crawford to revile, he had been subdued by Joleta’s terrible need.

  Now, leaving him at the door, she began to walk down the long hall. On either side, uneasily, admiringly, lasciviously in the last fumes of the sherry, the watching men scanned her; the child sister, the little flower of the nuns; Graham Malett’s translucent Joleta. Then, facing her brother, she stopped, and her white, kitten’s teeth sparkled. ‘I have a saint for a brother,’ she said. ‘Do you not envy me?’ and laughed.

  Gabriel, his baby skin suddenly white, took a step forward. ‘Oh, no,’ said Joleta, and stepped back. ‘A saint for a brother. Who will say, “This poor young man who still lives by his senses can be taught by us both to lift his eyes to greater things”.’ In her fresh, sibilant voice, the cadences of Gabriel’s rich one sounded harsh. ‘Take time, my child. Learn to know him, for I know he will learn to love you. And if, one day, you find you love him in return, there is none in this world I should rather have for my brother.…’

  Her voice faltered then, and broke; but her eyes, staring distended at Gabriel’s stunned face, were perfectly dry. ‘You said that of Francis Crawford,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘He came. And I learned to love him, oh yes. And he taught me to comfort him in my bed for the holy power of his love for me that did him such violence when we prayed.…’

  Joleta dragged herself forward and, freeing one childish arm from her cloak, she brought it unavailingly, like a thin flail, across her brother’s smooth cheek. Gabriel did not move. ‘That is for my maidenhood,’ she said. ‘Do you want him still for brother? I have asked him to marry me—there is all the sum of my pride. He laughs and says the landscape has lost its novelty. Look, Graham. He planted his bastard on me, those days at Midculter; but that is all he troubled to do.’

  She dropped her cloak. Twisted over her pathetic girth, her night-smock was grimy with travel and sweat. Bodily she looked worn and ill and abused. But her face, despite the stains of fatigue, had kept all its pure beauty. The skin was lovelier than Jerott had ever seen it; her fine brows and long lashes and thin, shapely nose added to the poignancy of what lay below.

  Never shifting his eyes as she talked, Gabriel swayed once, and Jerott thought he would faint. But then, he stayed silent, listening, although every few moments he would draw a long, shuddering breath, as if in the intervals the machine of his body had lapsed, and the lungs refused their office. At the end he said, his voice low, ‘You are very tired. But I am glad you came. You know there is nothing to fear now. I am here.’ He put out his hand, tentatively, and laid it on her thin arm. ‘Come and sleep.’

  Concentrated completely on Joleta he was ignoring, Jerott saw, the noise of comment mounting around them; and for Joleta, it did not seem to exist. In the hot, crowded room, thick with the raw fumes of wine and humanity, their emotions at loose, enlarged and played upon by alcohol and adulation both, every man there felt, as Jerott did, the shock and outrage at Joleta’s pitiful tale. Like some helpless audience at a play, they heard Joleta say, with the same obsessive clarity, ‘Where is he? He should see your nephew, shouldn’t he?’ And suddenly breaking out again, with tears of anger for the first time streaming down her damp skin: ‘He hates you! Won’t you realize it? That’s why he has done this! He hates you and all you stand for! And you thought you could convert him!’ And, standing in her dirty gown, she laughed and sobbed at once, her hands hanging loose.

  It was Jerott who, seeing that Gabriel dared not touch her, picked up her cloak and held her, wrapped again, against his travel-stained shoulder. Gabriel said, the magnificent voice uncertain, ‘I didn’t hope to … convert him. That would have been too officious. Joleta … Joleta, I only wanted him to worship you as I did. With that light in his life, he would have achieved nothing but good.’

  ‘His achievements are obvious,’ said Joleta bitterly. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘We shall go before he comes,’ said Gabriel quickly. ‘I was leaving anyway. We need only go a little earlier than I thought. Grizel Scott will take us in.’

  With the girl’s weight heavy on his arm, ‘She can’t travel,’ said Jerott flatly. ‘And for God’s sake, you’re not going to let Lymond turn her out? Or turn you out, for that matter.’

  Slurred still, but intelligible, Lancelot Plummer’s voice intruded. ‘So this is his little pastime—our fireball Count who’s so finicky about other gentlemen’s manners. I don’t think,’ said the architect with precise loathing, ‘that I care to continue in his unedifying company. De Seurre?’

  ‘He’ll find a few to his own taste, no doubt,’ said Michel de Seurre abruptly, called from sleep, like the rest, by a silent des Roches. ‘I shan’t be among them.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Tait, and the growl was taken up and echoed along the strewn tables, where in knots and groups the men of St Mary’s had begun to move forward.

  Gabriel lifted his head. ‘Wait.…’ he said, but there was no conviction now in his voice, and urgency and new force in Jerott’s as he said, ‘Wait? What for? Who will follow Francis Crawford after this? What fool would trust him?’

  And Randy Bell, standing grimly beside him, said, ‘You didn’t hear Sir Graham address us just now on the dangers of loose living and lax discipline in a fighting group. He didn’t talk about the times our gallant leader has failed us already. He hated Sir Graham all right. Mistress Joleta is right. Think of the winter campaigns Sir Graham was forced to take part in and suffer; think of the night he came back from his work of mercy with the fuel. Think of the Hot Trodd when Crawford left him to do all the work and face all the danger—do you know why? Do you know that was the night, the night before Will Scott died, that Lymond was forcing Gabriel’s sister in an inn in Dumbarton?’

  For a moment he paused; for a moment in that ugly drunken assembly there was silence. Then as pandemonium belaboured the air, Randy raised his voice to a bellow. ‘Think of that, and think how again and again, Sir Graham has saved Lymond and protected him. But for Gabriel, would Effie Harperfield and her children have escaped yon day the siege-engine ran off? Would we have succeeded even so far as we did at the Hot Trodd; would we be blessed by the Church and have the regard of M. d’Oisel and the Queen Dowager? I tell you, if Gabriel hadn’t spoken out at Falkland the other day there would be no St Mary’s now, and no future for any of u
s.’

  Inflamed with drink and an overmastering rage, Randy Bell glared at the roaring concourse around him. ‘How much of all the great work we’ve heard of has been Graham Malett’s doing, not Lymond’s? Graham Malett’s, aided by God?’

  ‘God knows,’ said a lazy voice, cool and familiar, from behind. ‘But looking round the policies I can tell that either Gabriel or the Saint-Esprit is a past master at housework.… Good evening,’ said Lymond politely to all the hostile faces as they turned. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to stab me in the front, rather than the back? I am here, like the Blessed Gerard himself, ready to fall like a fruit, ripe for eternity.’

  In the second’s flinching silence, it was the girl who spoke first. Pushing herself off Jerott’s shoulder, Joleta turned, and with her eyes fixed on the speaker, moved to her brother’s side and clasped both frail hands, hard, on his arm. ‘It’s Francis Crawford,’ she said, her young voice harsh. ‘Kill him for me?’ And as, around them, the sluggish noise climbed of men nursing their anger through drink and oratory and resented fatigue, Jerott Blyth bent his head, and drawing his sword smoothly from its long, leather scabbard, turned, last of them all.

  Profoundly unexcited, Francis Crawford stood framed in his own carved doorway and gazed, in polite inquiry, at the receding rows of dishevelled tables crowded with hostile, sullen faces; the long raised table at the far end where Plummer stood watching, with Tait and Bell at his side; and Cormac O’Connor sprawled at ease, a tight-lipped smile on his fleshy, unshaven face; and lastly at the small knot of people standing alone between himself and the dais: Gabriel, with his sister’s slight, swollen figure on his arm, and Jerott, his sword balanced delicately between his two palms, facing him at their side. Then, raising his hands to his short, square-collared cloak, Lymond unclipped it and threw it aside, followed, a second later, by his sword belt.

  ‘That’s in case anyone feels nervous,’ said Lymond. ‘I take it all of you are drunk?’ And looking round at the thronging men and the ruins of his elegant hall, his long mouth twitched. ‘Ah, yes,’ said Lymond. ‘Our dear Masters, the sick. Mr O’Connor has been too generous.’

  Jerott, his purpose fractionally interrupted, said sharply, ‘How did you know that?’ And then, ‘Your cloak is dry!’

  ‘The look-out, unfortunately, is not,’ said Lymond agreeably. ‘I have been here for half an hour. I passed you on the way. I thought I would allow Sir Graham rather than myself the pleasure of upbraiding the fallen under the circumstances.… It is not a question, Joleta, of squabbling over your honour. There are verifiable facts about that of which even Sir Graham is unaware. He won’t be much happier for knowing them, but then this public exposé isn’t my choice. He and I no doubt later will make our peace.…’

  ‘Make our peace!’ Graham Malett’s easy voice was stripped to its warp. He did not move, his face turned, stiffly blank, on his chosen novice. He said slowly, using the words of King Clodoreus to his son, ‘Thou cursed harlot! If this is true, then nothing else in this world is of moment. And other courtesy than death you will not have.’

  The sword in Jerott’s hands flashed as he caressed it. ‘It is true, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Thompson’s women were a little coarse in the grain. You preferred to teach a fifteen-year-old to serve you, and carelessly got her with child. Would we ever have known, if I hadn’t called at Midculter today, and your precious mother and brother hadn’t been out? What were they planning to do with it when it was born? Drown it? Threaten Joleta to keep quiet?’

  ‘My dear Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘Lemand lamp of lechery I may be, but neither I nor my family are naïve. To get Joleta with child meant the end of my career at St Mary’s. Even if my family weren’t the solid pillars of virtue they unfortunately are, no one could possibly conceal the birth of the child, whatever fantasy you are proposing. My God, half the Lowlands of Scotland is alive with rumour already. Use your head, Jerott. Surely, if the child had been mine, I would have married her?’

  For a second, Jerott’s black brows drew together. Then he laughed, his teeth flashing in his white face. ‘Married her? You heard her. She wants you dead.’

  ‘Don’t shout. Naturally,’ said Lymond. ‘Because I won’t marry her. Could we all sit down?’

  The point of Jerott’s sword, swung smoothly round, sparkled before Lymond’s soft, exposed throat. ‘Not yet,’ said Jerott tersely. ‘Do we understand that Joleta ever dreamed of marrying you?’

  ‘Ask her,’ said Lymond. ‘Ask my mother and brother. Ask Madame Donati. Ask yourself if she cried out for help when you found us at Boghall, or at Dumbarton. She had only to scream at Dumbarton and you would have caught us hand-havand, as Fergie Hoddim would say. And as he would also say, under these circumstances we have a clear ruling in law. Volenti non fit injuria, Jerott. No injury may be reckoned done to a consenting party.’

  ‘Ah, would you hear him,’ said a mellow Irish voice from the background. Across the strewn table on the dais, Cormac O’Connor leaned forward, his hirsute hands clasped, his brown, fleshy face eager. ‘Give him the great occasion, and he will put a thread of Latin round it. Was it a case of volenti non fit injuria, would you say, when he wiled away me wife Oonagh O’Dwyer?’

  Lymond’s head slowly lifted, until his gaze met and crossed the big Irishman’s. ‘You have no wife, O’Connor.’

  ‘You have the right of it. Not since you killed her,’ said O’Connor agreeably. ‘Left her to sink in the waters of Tripoli Bay, while you saved yourself in a Turkish boat. Full of kindness and sympathy the Turks, I’m told, and saw that none laid an uncivil finger on ye. But then, that great old fellow Dragut and yourself were slaves together, they tell me. The King of France paid a smart sum, they tell me too, for the likes of you to warn the Knights of St John that the Turk was coming. And in spite of all a noble prince like yourself could do, Gozo was slaughtered and Tripoli fell … the great warrior that you were!’

  ‘A traitor … a traitor in the convent. Is that why you tried to stop me climbing the wall at Mdina? Is that why you tried to join the Turks at Gozo? Is that why you gave all your time to the Calabrians at Tripoli—pretended to save the fort to safeguard your name, knowing all the time it would fall?’ Lifting his dazed, magnificent head from his sister’s rose-gold hair, Graham Malett’s voice rang out, and deepened and hardened until it was clothed, at last, in the timbre they all knew from the quiet chapel at St Mary’s, where he led them in praise.

  ‘Of course. Thompson was your associate, but the Turks didn’t touch him, did they? Oonagh O’Dwyer knew what you were, so she had to die. Did Nicholas Upton recognize you, too, for a damned soul?’ And all the serenity gone from his eyes, Graham Malett laughed shortly.

  ‘What a fool I was, harnessed only in my Faith, believing you fought, with me, to repair the flaws in the Order. I offered you here my heart and the work of my hands, and when you seized the one and laughed at the other I thought, this is young arrogance and youthful cruelty; both will pass. And so I trusted you with Joleta …’ His tone changed.

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ added Gabriel abruptly, swinging round, and the men he and Lymond had both led, who, surging from bench and table, roused and threatening, now filled all the space around and behind them, saw his strained face and the two shining tracks made by the tears on his face. ‘Be quiet! Is this a matter for drunken soldiers or for any of the common laws of society?’

  ‘It is a matter, I think, for the “fine instrument we call St Mary’s”,’ said Lymond’s undisturbed voice. ‘Leaving all our disillusionments aside, you cannot change leaders in a drunken brawl in the middle of the night and still hope to remain a company—what was it?—“worthy of renown throughout Christendom.” I shall not escape you. I have, I think, an answer to most of the accusations that trouble you, and it is very much to my own advantage to stay. Then you may hear the case on both sides in the cold light of sobriety and justice.’ His observant eyes swept them all, resting finally on the men who silently had approached his sides and sto
od now, breathing heavily, at his shoulder. One of them stepped back.

  ‘I am no more than one man,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘Whatever your decision, I shall honour it. And it will give you an opportunity to persuade Sir Graham, if you wish, to stay as your commander. At the moment, as you see, his only desire is to leave.’

  With a hiss of steel, a second unsheathed sword joined Jerott’s before Lymond’s eyes. ‘No,’ said Randy Bell brutally. ‘You will be the one to leave.’ And knotting tighter and tighter, the circle about them moved inwards. Standing behind and between Jerott and Bell, a hand on each shoulder, ‘You should have married me,’ said Joleta in a low voice.

  ‘Regrets, Joleta?’ said Lymond. Dressed for rough riding, in his white shirt and sleeveless leather jack, the soft deerskin boots pulled high over his hose, empty-handed and bareheaded, he looked, beside their dishevelled turbulence, patiently authoritative. No one yet had laid hands on him. His blue gaze, diamond-hard, rested on the girl’s breathtaking face. ‘Why not tell Sir Graham the truth? It won’t be pleasant if he finds out when you are together and alone. Here, you have three hundred protectors.’

  ‘What truth?’ said Graham Malett slowly, and turning his own head, he studied his sister’s thin face. And still in the same slow, almost caressing voice, ‘Why did you not call for help, Joleta?’

  Nicolas de Nicolay, arrived unnoticed behind them all, took a breath just in time to save himself from suffocation. Diable de diable de diable de diable … the boy was going to do it. My only hope, he had said, is to drive a wedge between Joleta and her brother. But how to do it, without revealing that he knew all? Launch into half-proved excuses for his behaviour here and on Malta, and they would lose patience and attack. He must have time, for his witnesses and his evidence to be brought in unmolested. So … if only this powerful Gabriel might be led to think that he could not trust his sister … if only his sister might be brought to realize that once alone, her brother might turn against her, she might—she just might—desert Sir Graham for a safe and winning side.…