‘Mr Guthrie,’ said Sybilla. ‘Tell me. How did you discover Francis?’
The soldier-lecturer grinned. ‘Forethought, my lady. He drew up a route, just before he left Boghall, and tacked it all into us like soling a floor. A day in this cabin and two days in that cave, two days on the journey, and three in a friendly farm. We all know where he is any day you like to choose, and can report to him, and get our orders. And those who are watching St Mary’s report, too.’
‘How is he?’ said Sybilla with equal composure. ‘I am told he received a thrashing. I am sure he has one or two owing him.’
‘Yes. Well, not one of this order,’ said Guthrie, glancing up at Jerott and de Nicolay. ‘Someone thought they were taking dust from a floor-claith. Ye’ll no can pat him on the back for a week or two. But otherwise he’ll do. He’s food and drink and all the blankets he needs,’ he added kindly, for the Dowager’s benefit. ‘And a purpose that’ll see him through, were he holed like a thurible. I’m afraid, ma’am, a high-handed young despot is what you’ve bred, you and your husband.’
‘I suspected as much,’ said Sybilla. ‘Gaineth me no garland of green, but it ben of withies wrought. Don’t look so nervous, my dear. If I had a woolly shirt and a tin flagon of medicine you could have them with pleasure, for the amusement of seeing him laugh himself sick. Tell him … I have a new cat.’
‘Is that all?’ said Jerott, standing up uncomfortably. Guthrie was to take him to where Lymond lay.
‘And that George Paris landed at Dumbarton today, I’m told,’ said Sybilla. ‘And means to leave shortly for a lodging in Edinburgh.’
‘So!’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, suddenly vastly interested. ‘The sensible one downstairs and her story fall into place after all. Is this, would you think, one of Gabriel’s final moves?’
‘I hope so,’ said Sybilla coolly, and there was no ambiguity in her meaning at all.
*
This day, in his provident itinerary, Francis Crawford was spending in a daub and wattle shepherd’s hut, deep in the Tweedsmuir hills.
Archie Abernethy, his sun-dried face impassive, was on guard. Passing him, with Alec Guthrie leading the way, Jerott was seized with a desire to be anywhere but here.
The evidence against Graham Malett, his lifelong hero, was overwhelming. He was prepared to believe it with his head, if not yet with his heart. His feeling for Lymond, on the other hand, echoed a little what his own men had felt last night. An illogical resentment that he, with ail his failings, should be the deus ex machina to destroy Gabriel’s great name.
To Lymond’s cool brain it was inevitable. He must have set out deliberately to expose Graham Malett a long time ago. He had spared nothing. He had had the hardihood to play the third, vulnerable hand in the last knife-edge game between Joleta, Sir Graham and himself, in the hope that Joleta would be frightened into confession; he had even, with the same mechanical single-mindedness, offered himself as whipping-boy to induce Gabriel to give full rein to his passions.
So he had come to the place where Graham Malett, finding both Lymond and Joleta his sister troublesome, had found a witty solution at the top of the steps to St Mary’s.
Again, it was logical. It was logical that Lymond had sensibly saved his own life at the expense of the girl’s. By Joleta’s orders, the old woman Trotty had been killed. He knew, from Sybilla’s quiet account, of what else Gabriel’s sister had done. She was wild and cruel and corrupt. By taking that murderous thrust in his own body, Lymond would have done only what Gabriel coolly hoped he would do. Jerott could admire his good sense, but he did not particularly want to meet him now or indeed ever again.
He had not been announced. So, hesitating on the threshold and peering into the murky interior, Jerott heard Lymond say in his ordinary voice, ‘Come in, Alec. I regret the redolent gloom; the sheep-stank had a little more style about it. But Archie stamps on my fingers if I venture outside … Jerott!’
He stopped speaking for a moment. Moving forward, angrily aware that Guthrie had found something unexpected to do outside, Jerott distinguished a candle guttering in the near corner of the windowless cabin. Papers covered the makeshift table on which it stood, with Lymond’s hands spread upon them, full in the light of the blown flame. His face, in the reflected glow, was to Jerott’s dazzled eyes merely a pale mask of inquiry, its framework and cavities engraved in depth by the light. Then he said, unexpectedly, ‘I am deeply sorry.’
Jerott Blyth let the hide door fall to behind him, and moved farther in. ‘Madame Donati has told us everything she knows about Sir Graham,’ he said, ‘But the groom who killed Trotty Luckup is dead. Your brother thinks he can find out who did it.’
Lymond looked down, and picking up the pen he had been using, balanced it thoughtfully between his two forefingers. He said, without looking up, ‘And you believe Evangelista Donati? She was devoted to Joleta, remember.’
‘She couldn’t have invented …’ Jerott’s voice failed him. ‘I believed her,’ he said shortly. ‘I have heard also about the Hot Trodd. And there are other … discrepancies.’ He paused. ‘He has set mastiffs after you.’
‘Yes.’ Lymond laid down the pen with care. ‘At Martinmas I kill my swine, and at Christmas I drink red wine. An act of rather less than Christian charity. But war on the infidel is the Order’s prime rule, isn’t it, Jerott?’
‘So also is chastity,’ said Jerott, his strong voice blanched still with distress. He took a deep breath and added, ‘I have come to tell you that I am rejoining Sir Graham at St Mary’s.’
Under the candle flame, brightening as the hills outside dimmed towards night, Lymond’s hands moved slowly together and united, with great care. When he looked up his underlit lashes starred his face with spiked shadow, like a doll’s. ‘No, Jerott,’ he said. ‘Some of us might deceive Gabriel; but you, never.’
From his rare advantage of height, Jerott Blyth stared down at the seated man. ‘Yes, of course, that’s what you would think,’ he said. ‘That I was proposing to spy for you.’
The hands in the candlelight lay still. Lymond said, ‘Surely there are only two intelligent reasons for returning to Gabriel now. One is to spy for me. The other is to betray me. I assumed you would hardly visit me in the latter case to tell me so.’
Jerott Blyth’s black brows were straight above his shadowed eyes, and his lips pressed together before he answered at last. ‘My reason is not an intelligent one. I have seen what intelligence can do.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the pleasant voice. ‘My heart mourneth sore of the death of her; for she was a passing fair lady, and a young. Also a cold-blooded little trollop. Desert me, Chevalier, because I dodged, but for God’s sake don’t feel called upon to wash the stains from the murderer’s hand.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Jerott Blyth, ‘I am called upon to care for Graham Malett’s impaired soul, not to drive him to further excesses.’ With an effort, he made his voice level. ‘I shall give him no information, naturally, about your whereabouts or plans. And I shall have the hunt for you stopped.’
‘In the teeth of the whole bloody French army, M. l’Ambassadeur du Roi d’Oisel included? Don’t be a raving fool, Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s out of Gabriel’s hands now, as he meant it to be. Use your brain. This isn’t a giant strayed. It’s a clever and powerful man who can find pleasure in a vast, despotic scheme like this and work towards it secretly for years if necessary. The Order taught him to kill his infidel, and by heaven, he’s using the knowledge on every one of us standing in his way. I’ve great respect for the power of prayer to dislodge devils, but in this instance, I’d prefer to use a hundred pounds or so of round stone shot, at close quarters.’
‘As St Mary’s teaches,’ said Jerott. ‘Really, there isn’t much to choose between you, is there?’ His dark eyes rested on the mess of papers on the bright table. ‘He will hang when you have your evidence, without a thought for all that is great in him. You would have killed him yourself, I know well, except that
it wasn’t convenient to martyr him. You didn’t see him in Malta in the great days, preaching, fighting.… His name rang round the Mediterranean.’
‘Before he gave up hope of deposing the Grand Master. So,’ said Lymond, and unclasping his hands, he lifted the table away with a movement of unexpected violence, and got up. ‘As soon as you begin to lead him into the paths of righteousness, he will do one of two things. He will kill you, because of what you obviously know, or he will promptly become converted for exactly as long as it suits him to achieve his object. Either way your respective souls are going to emerge a little dog-eared. You are risking innocent lives to indulge in a quite hopeless piece of missionary work.’
There was no heat in the hut. As the shadows gathered and the candle began to flicker low, Jerott saw his opponent only as a lit shirt-sleeve and long, smooth line of dark hose, leaning back against the tough mud wall, his hands tucked into his trunk-band. Breathing hard, his face flushed, Jerott did not feel the cold. He said, ‘Have you counted how many have lost their lives since you took the great matter of Graham Malett in solitary hand? He accused you of pushing Joleta back into the gutter. What chance have you given him?’ His voice shaking, Jerott said, ‘He might have been entrusted to the wisest hands in the Order to save. Now I—I have to.… His only hope is in me. Do you think this is easy?’
Head bent, Lymond was studying the invisible floor at his feet. After a moment, he said, ‘It is very sad; but no one with theological training is ever going to believe that nine times out of ten, what is best for one’s character is the primrose path, not the thicket of thorns. You realize, of course, that knight or not, he will die in the end for what he has done. And that if he is to die shriven, you have a week or two only in which to make your conversion. I shall have all the proof I need by then; more than he can possibly refute.’
He looked up suddenly. ‘Do you mean him to pay for his crimes, Jerott? Or do you plan to take him south, where he may see the light of repentance in prayerful peace, and return one day to illumine your Order? You are still under his spell, aren’t you? A man no worse, you may say, than others who rule today, who stops at nothing to achieve power and has all the virtues of courage and leadership and a wide-ranging mind. But a man, too, who could sway nations with the power of his voice and the religious fervour he can inspire. My God, Jerott: think of the damage a good and simple man can do under these terms. What do you suppose an evil and most damnably intelligent one would do? No, mon Chevalier,’ said Lymond, speaking clearly and slowly. ‘You are not going back to Graham Malett now, or at any other time.’
Afterwards, Jerott realized that, blinded with anger, he had missed the small sounds Lymond had been waiting for: the approaching, hesitant footsteps of Archie Abernethy and Guthrie, waiting with impatience for the long interview to be over; stirred finally by curiosity and then by suspicion to come close and listen. Moving quietly as he spoke, Lymond had reached at length the dark corner of the hut where Archie Abernethy had made up his bed of dry heather, the blankets turned back where he had left it. Beside it, lying unseen in the failing light, as Jerott should have known it would be, was his sword.
Now Lymond made one sudden movement and straightening, the hilt in his hand, backed swiftly, still speaking, between Jerott Blyth and the door. ‘Your sword, Jerott,’ said Francis Crawford quietly to his boyhood friend, and Jerott Blyth, unbelieving rage rising within him, found himself looking along the steady, silver blade of Lymond’s own steel.
With an instinct sure and swift as the Order could make it in all the years of his training, he flung himself sideways and gripping the makeshift table, flung it rocking towards Lymond as he drew out his own blade with a hiss. Lymond, expecting it, hurled himself sideways. The table, teetering, crashed on to its back where he had been, fully blocking the curtained doorway of the hut.
There was a moment’s pause while the two men stood, breathing fast, long swords ready, on opposite sides of the cabin; then the hide door-cover was ripped away from outside and Abernethy, with Guthrie behind him, laid hands on the overturned table to heave it aside and jump in.
‘All right,’ said Lymond. He was very breathless, but his eyes did not move from Jerott’s wild face. ‘This is my affair. Alec, these papers contain the case against Graham Malett as I know it so far. You know what to do with them. Archie, wait outside with Mr Guthrie. You understand that whatever happens, the Chevalier is not to return to St Mary’s. Nor is he to suffer any harm. It isn’t his fault that he’s surrounded by vile engineers and commercials. Jerott, in this space neither of us can possibly miss. Put down your sword.’
‘Talk!’ said Jerott Blyth between his teeth. ‘I have had my bellyful of talk, without respect of honour or oath. I don’t forget that you would use a living woman as your shield rather than lay down your life for the justice you talk about. I risk no one’s life but my own, and if I succeed, my prize will be a man whose stature you would not even begin to comprehend.’ His dark eyes brilliant, the young knight stopped, and raising his heavy sword high in both hands, hurled it suddenly to the opposite corner of the hut, where it fell thudding against the bare wall, and thence to the floor. ‘Stop me if you dare,’ he said, and walked steadily towards Lymond and the door.
For a second only, Lymond hesitated. Then, a moment before the other man reached him, Lymond also lifted his sword aside quietly and dropped it behind the overturned table at his side. Behind him, Alec Guthrie’s voice said sharply, ‘Crawford! Let him go!’ and Archie Abernethy called out.
Jerott paid no attention. He saw Lymond standing in the open entrance to the hut, his hands gripping the overturned edge of the board at his back, and the dimmer figures of Guthrie and Abernethy against the storm-dark sky behind. Then he jumped.
They were the same age, of the same build, and they both knew all the possible grips which would throw a man down and keep him down, and also if possible ward off outside interference as well. Lymond, his eyes wide and dark, sidestepped as Jerott thought he would, and so instead of crashing at full pelt into the dark bulk of the table, Jerott heeled off it; got clear, all but a glancing blow, when Lymond from behind it jerked it on to him; and was already round and behind Lymond before he had straightened, and finding a purchase, with knee and two toughened hands, to twist his leader’s arms back with all the strength he possessed and throw him in Abernethy’s face.
He might have done it, despite a kick in the ankle that made him gasp, if Lymond had not chosen precisely the right moment to bend sharply and, using his trapped hands as leverage, to somersault the other man to the ground.
His breathing soft and quick, as it should be, Jerott bounced to his feet like a cat. Bit by bit, he was losing his anger, in the sheer artistry of what they were doing. He crouched, ready to engage, just as the candle went out.
And Lymond, he realized, was prepared for it: had in the last second of light already marked his next grip, and from the force of the onslaught Jerott now received, hurling him back willy-nilly into the far corner of the hut, had determined to subjugate him, with the darkness as his ally, here and now.
Then Jerott was down, as he had so often been down, suddenly, in the days of training. He answered it properly. He used his strength, which was suddenly invincible, to free the one hand that could chop, with its cast-iron edge, at the throat rising from the open-necked shirt above him; and as Lymond rolled sideways to go with the impact of the blow, Jerott surged up, kicking, and with all the force he possessed, flung himself on top of his commander and then, his hands hard in his shoulders, propelled him over and over the uneven ground until Lymond crashed back, under Jerott’s passionate thrust, straight into the spiked bulk of the table. As his back took the full force of the blow, he exclaimed aloud.
There followed absolute silence, ringing with the reverberations of someone’s shouting, abruptly cut off. From Lymond, spreadeagled under his hands, there was no further sound and Jerott, kneeling back abruptly, pushing the hair from habit out of his e
yes, was able to review what he had done. It had been deliberate. He was, after all, an homme de métier.
A dark figure dropped from outside over the table edge and thrusting past Jerott, still kneeling, got out a candle and lit it. In the new light under his fingers, Archie Abernethy’s face was a demonaic mask: Koshchei the Deathless. ‘I wad flense ye here for the gulls, gin there was time,’ said Archie. ‘But there’s nane. Get ye gone.’
‘Now. Not so hasty, Archie.’ Alec Guthrie’s admonishing voice from the doorway struck cold into the little hut. ‘We were told that the Chevalier was not to be let go back to St Mary’s, whatever happened. It’s just Mr Blyth’s good luck that you’re lighting the candle and I’m standing here gaping with my chaft-blade in the air, all fit to be walloped.’
It might have been Mr Blyth’s good luck, but he was doing nothing about it. Instead, gasping still, he was looking at Francis Crawford, lying still at the foot of the table, his skin flushed, his lids heavy, his lips cracked with fever.
Jerott shifted his feet. Archie Abernethy swore, and, sponge in hand, dropped beside the man Jerott had felled so handily, while Jerott uneasily drew back. He said angrily, ‘He chose to fight. Did he think I’d come crawling back, overcome by remorse?’
‘The charitable assumption,’ said Alec Guthrie’s grating voice, ‘is that he didn’t intend his friends to be hurt in his quarrel. Also, he had reason to believe he could teach you a suitable lesson with a raging temperature and all four limbs paralysed. He was wrong, that’s all.… Are you going, or do we have to kick you out?’
‘He’ll be mad,’ said Archie in a low voice. Under his careful hands, Lymond made a sudden, wordless sound, and his closed eyes tightened.