The Disorderly Knights (66 page)

That time, she had looked at him; really looked, from the soft pulse that pattered in the silvery down over his brow to the curled fingers, each no larger than the top joint of her own. A line of milk, not her own, lay in the pink mouth under the sucking-blister and the lashes, that were to grow so thick and astonishing, were just beginning to spike the dark-blue, unfinished eyes. Then some wandering air-lock, toying with primitive nerves, sent one end of the milky mouth up in a merry, mischievous, sardonic grin. In four years, he would mean it. Now, he presented, innocently, the heart-breaking replica of the man whose son he was.

It had been a mistake to look. She had never been well after that, and they had kept the child from her, to live on alone into the barbaric unknown, if she died; to be a threat to the safety and happiness of his father, whatever happened. To Francis Crawford, this unknown son was a tragedy of which he must never learn. Oonagh O’Dwyer had let him think herself dead to free her pride from his pity. She had no desire to live on, in macabre comedy, as the fecund mother of his unwanted son.

But she did live on, and time passed, and the heat grew worse. Dragut and his household had moved elsewhere, but she was at first too ill to travel, then well enough only to be brought here to Algiers. She knew that somewhere in the palace Khaireddin was being tended, but there were other children, and nothing to tell her whether the bubbling purr she heard at night, of a baby full and content, was his.

Once or twice recently she heard, as well as Kedi’s voice and her crooning, a baby laugh. It was an unexpected, deep, throaty chuckle which caught her breath and made the tears, stupidly, stream down into her black hair. But she did not know Khaireddin’s scream, or the sound Francis Crawford might have made when once he too was branded for the galleys. So she did not guess. And when Kedi, her face bloated with weeping, told her one day that the baby was very ill, Oonagh did not ask why, but was merely stoically glad.

‘Neither he nor I will live to burden his father,’ she had said hardily to Güzel, standing above her cradling the unwitting morsel, months ago, in her arms.

And behind the veil, she had felt the other woman’s level scrutiny,
and heard her considered English: ‘You believe so? In my experience, there is no person who does not blossom near to a child. You may find you have stolen what is most precious from your friend. Who will ever know Khaireddin’s babyhood, except Kedi?’

And no one, she supposed,
had
known it, except Kedi, to whom he gave his first smile and at whom he laughed. Jolly, bountiful Kedi, who would do nevertheless whatever the eunuchs might order.

Soon after that Dragut called briefly on his way back to Turkey, and the third wife, who had ordered the branding, was turned off and sold. Güzel was not with him. The corsair, lighter by a stone for his summer raiding, went and stood over the silent cot where the yellow-haired baby lay, neither sleeping nor crying now, with silken, egg-blue stains under the strained, dark-blue eyes. He questioned Kedi, who gabbled, terrified, in faulty Arabic, and saw the maid who tended Oonagh each day. Then he retired to his own silk-hung room, and calling his scribe, dictated a letter to Scotland.

‘The child is like to die, and the woman also. I return thy money since neither, being in poor health, seems worth the pain of preserving. As long as she lives I am ready, for the honour in which I hold thee, to allow the woman to stay. The child, if he lives, will be I fear of no value to his parents and of less than none to the Sultan. I intend, therefore, to sell him.’

And on Dragut’s bearded face as he set his seal on the paper: the seal with his initials and the first word of a verse from the Qur’ân, was a most amiable smile.

XI
T
he
C
rown and the
A
nchor

(
Falkland Palace and the Kyles of Bute, August 1552
)

W
HILE
Dragut’s letter to him was being written, Sir Graham Malett was still with the French Ambassador and the Queen Dowager of Scotland at Falkland, where he had been taken two weeks ago from the March meeting to bear M. d’Oisel company.

Mary of Guise set store by the big knight’s advice. And when, at last, the subject of St Mary’s was exhausted to her satisfaction, she found him intelligent on many subjects, and diffidently helpful on the matter of the St John revenues which Sandilands, crippled with sciatica, had gladly put in his hands.

The Queen Dowager of Scotland, no fool, had looked up from the pages, neatly covered with sums representing all the Knights Hospitallers’ considerable income in Scotland, and had said, ‘And the required tithe, you are saying, should go to Malta in the usual way? But how can this be done, when the English Priory at Clerkenwell is dissolved?’

‘It cannot be done,’ had said Gabriel, his clear gaze, smiling a little, on hers. ‘Except by one of us taking it. A risky journey, and a destination no less … hazardous.’

Mary of Guise had heard all the reports of the Grand Master. She said, in a voice as calm as his own. ‘Too hazardous, I should say. And meanwhile, the receipts pile up?’

Gabriel bowed. ‘They are a constant anxiety to the Commandery. It seems to Sir James.…’ He hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘That since these are destined to uphold Mother Church, they should be placed in hands best qualified to do so. And forgive me, but in Scotland you have an outpost of the Religion besieged as virulently as Malta. For Holy Church, and His Most Christian Majesty who sustains her, the Priory of Torphichen would be content to make over all its tithe to Your Grace.’

‘Instead of to His Eminence the Grand Master? You realize, Sir Graham,’ said the Queen Mother, who liked to be sure of her income, ‘that the Order may make serious protest, and even supersede yourself and Sir James?’

Gabriel’s well-cut mouth tightened, and then relaxed again in a half-rueful smile. ‘The day that the Order is strong enough to make a protest, and honest enough to carry it, I shall go back to Malta,’ he said.

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.’