The Disorderly Knights (75 page)

The door clicked. Such had been the pressure that no one there had noticed Margaret Erskine rise and go out. Now she came back, and behind her the Moor Salablanca bore into the room a tray of pewter cups and a flagon. Silently he distributed them, and in the little release from tension they scraped back their chairs and stretched, and uttered commonplaces among themselves.

At the head of the table Lymond did not move, staring down at his hands; nor did he lift the cup when it was put at his side. Margaret, pausing at his chair, said crisply, ‘Yours is water.’

Then he turned round, and the blue eyes, alarmingly, blazed into laughter. ‘My dear, my dear. You are the queen of women,’ he said. ‘For this, you are right, I need to be either entirely sober or very drunk indeed.’

On his left, Sybilla had heard. ‘I think, on the whole,’ said the Dowager, looking levelly at her son, ‘I should prefer that you kept sober and
we
got exceedingly drunk.’ And that, Adam on his other side noticed, effectively silenced Francis Crawford.

After that, there were no more interludes. Thompson, brisk after his third cup, began it again, jocularly, by remarking, ‘And so ye bedded the lassie at Dumbarton and left me on my lainsome, ye rat. But why, now, if ye jaloused a trap? There was a loon on the watch in the courtyard that night who was gey interested in your window. Did ye not see him?’

‘The Master of the Revels. Yes, I saw him,’ said Lymond. ‘Look, the moment that girl walked into the inn, never mind my room, I lost the chance of preserving my laughable reputation. The damage was done. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t pay for it. And there was always the chance, an unlikely one, I admit, that
I
might have converted
her
.’

‘And did you?’ It was Lord Culter, bitterly disingenuous.

For a second, the line of anger between Lymond’s fair brows showed; then his face smoothed, controlled again. ‘Obviously not,’ he said. ‘From her performance when you walked in and afterwards. You didn’t spread the rumours about my conduct that night, Richard; nor did I. And Gabriel was in no position to appear to know what had happened—not yet. It must have been done, in some artless-clumsy way, by Joleta herself.’

‘It was,’ said Lady Jenny brightly. ‘For a clever girl, I never heard anyone
quite
so bad at lying.’

‘And she was very good at lying,’ said Sybilla. ‘I can confirm that, if it has any value. But why spread the rumours at all?’

‘To prepare the ground. She is, as you know, to bear a child. It is not mine, and could be proved, I suppose, not to be mine, but I shall be accused of having fathered it, and in an atmosphere so emotional that reason must be swept away entirely. That will be the last move—or nearly the last move. And it must be done, for effect, soon. Joleta’s condition will become public any moment now. For Gabriel to be mortally hurt by the revelation, the blow must come first. He will know, by now, from our little scene yesterday at Mid-culter that he is safe; that I have spurned Joleta and alienated my family without apparently having any suspicion of himself. That, indeed, up to now has been my only strength—that he is vain, and has conducted his campaign without truly examining his pawns, except for their faults.

‘Fortunately, perhaps,’ said Lymond with a wry smile which did not touch his eyes, ‘among the throng of mine he missed my only virtue, which is persistence. Joleta cannot travel, but the news will be brought, any day now, that whoever lay by the rose has emphatically
borne the flower away, if not the bush. By that time, the news of Thompson’s little affair will be reaching the Queen Dowager and she will do what she threatened—descend on St Mary’s to clean it out. Instead, she will find, I should guess, St Mary’s under sole control of Sir Graham, bitter but brave.
You
may not object,’ said Lymond pointedly, ‘but if I am to lose my life in the same way as Will Scott, I should like it to be clear why.’

There was a little silence. Then Janet Beaton, speaking carefully, said, ‘Will died on the stairs at Liddel Keep, defending it from the Kerrs. He died from a left-handed sword-thrust that cut off his right arm.’

Lymond looked again at his hands. ‘Adam,’ he said. ‘You were there. Do you remember Randy Bell’s account of how Will died? It was quite accurate. He said, “He took the brunt of the rush for the stairs. I was in the middle and Crawford at the top when they burst in, and he pushed past us all.” Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ said Blacklock.

Lymond looked up, and now in his narrowed eyes they saw some of the temper concealed up to now. ‘ “
I was in the middle
,” Bell said. A left-hand sword-cut from below, Janet, is quite indistinguishable from a right-hand sword-cut from behind … except for the angle of the cut. Will Scott was killed by a blow that cut
downwards
.’

‘
Bell!
’ Slowly, Alec Guthrie got to his feet and stared, thick hands on the boards, at the head of the table. ‘Will Scott was killed by
Bell?
’

‘Of course,’ said Lymond. ‘Think, my butty. Who supplied Adam with drugs? Who worked with Plummer on the siege engine that nearly killed the Harperfields? Who came with such magnificent timing to Dumbarton to interrupt my
tête-à-tête
with Joleta? Who killed old man Turnbull just as he was protesting, no doubt, that what he had done was done under orders, and that killing Turnbulls was no part of the scheme? You didn’t see a Scott kill the old man, Adam. You only assumed he did. It was Bell’s hard luck that I actually got to the Keep from Dumbarton, and he couldn’t slip out before the attack, as he’d planned. The Kerrs wouldn’t have got into the Keep without that cellar key. Who left them the key? Who bribed the Turnbulls? Bell would know, as well as Gabriel. It was Bell who tried to delay leaving St Mary’s in order to weaken Scott’s alibi still more for the cattle killing. Philippa should have died too, if I hadn’t got her away. As it was, the Scott clan was nearly cooked like pies in an oven, and the herd slaughtered, thus alienating Buccleuch from the protection of St Mary’s. Tosh has been with Wat as you know, Janet, ever since. For Gabriel is manipulating the concerns of the Scotts and the Kerrs. But for Tosh, the two families would have come face to face without our protection at the Hadden
Stank: two warnings concerning the date failed to reach us, confiscated by Gabriel’s men. In fact, because Buccleuch confined himself to his farce with the children, the March was unlikely to have any lethal outcome. But that was merely Providence’s own little joke. For the next step, surely, is the death of Buccleuch.’

Politely, but firmly, Nicolas de Nicolay cleared his throat. ‘There is something I would ask in all this. You say, and I believe you, that you were afraid when you left Malta that Sir Graham Malett meant to come and take your place at the head of your finished army. Why, then, did you permit him to stay at all? If you had turned him away, so courteously, at the first, he would have had time neither to make disciples nor to undermine your authority. Is this not strange?’

This time there was a long pause. Lymond’s face, again without expression, was turned to the long windows, where the cooling lacquers of dusk had overlaid the bright colours. ‘Turn away this great, militant monk, famous throughout Christendom? Yes, I might have done that. I would have lost most of my best men, and all the Knights of St John, and the others would have every reason to believe me afraid of his stature. But remember—or try to imagine—that I knew him, incredibly, as a man of evil intent: clever, powerful and basking in his gift for inspiring and handling his fellow-mortals.

‘Perhaps, once, he was all he appears to be. Perhaps he plumbed too early the false places of religion and of violence, perhaps he grew bored with his great skills; perhaps, as he once confessed to me, the sheer love of power corrupted what was never very difficult to corrupt.… Perhaps he is insane. But he is not what he seems. He is a great and dangerous man; and if I had turned him from St Mary’s do you think he would have accepted that for a moment? He had no fear, even on the dramatic night of the fuel crisis, that I would allow him to go. On the other hand, if I hadn’t taken a firm hold of the command on that night, I should have lost it to Malett. From then on, he was bound to try to get rid of me. He has refused an offer by the Queen Dowager to depose me, but only because he will be surer of the support of all St Mary’s when I have gone. His prize after all is to be Scotland, so ludicrously vulnerable during the Regency, so strategic in position, so potentially powerful. Failing St Mary’s, he would have found his army elsewhere, and fashioned it out of men less expendable than I am, or less intelligent than you.

‘I had,’ said Lymond, his eyes still remote on the glass, ‘really only two alternatives. I could have killed Graham Malett, or fought him. I should perhaps have killed him; but it would have been without proof and without reason, and I don’t, I suppose, any more than the next man desire to trespass out of this uncertain world through a noose in New Bigging Street. And it would have been the
end of St Mary’s and I had—I have—great hopes of St Mary’s. So—I elected to fight. I have probably lost.’

The faces round the table now were ghosts in the dusk, only shapes: long and short-haired, bald, snooded, above shoulders padded, buckled, sheathed in worn leather. No one spoke, though Thompson shifted explosively in his chair and pressing one hand on the table, looked round. ‘
No principles and no philosophy
,’ said Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter suddenly, her voice soft and derisive as she quoted his own account of the aims of St Mary’s. ‘And for money alone.’

‘Dragut Rais knew, did he not?’ said Nicolay. ‘You have not asked me what I know of Malta and Tripoli.’

‘Later, if you will,’ said Lymond, his voice flat. Speaking, suddenly, was an obvious effort, but his manner was still, like Sybilla’s, uncompromisingly cold. ‘Dragut Rais knew, yes. After all, Malett was working for him. But only Jerott, perhaps, would fully understand. The case here must stand or fall by what we can prove in Scotland. The case for the Government is a different matter. But I cannot move without proof, and I have come, at last, to the point where I cannot get proof without help. It is too near the end for me.’

‘I see.’ It was Guthrie’s quiet voice. ‘Naturally. If what you say is true, he can’t afford to let you live, can he? Your death would be persuasive, of course, but a pity.’

Lymond’s half-smile could be felt in the dusk. ‘I must confess, it would be more … convenient if I could convince you now. If not, there is one thing at least you can do. Richard.… If anything happens to me, Lymond will be your property. Do what the Queen Mother has threatened to do. Blow it up. Dismantle the cabins and all the encampment, disperse the stock, destroy the weapons. It was created with my money; it is not Graham Malett’s or the Queen Dowager’s, it is mine. I would forgive no one, least of all a man of my own blood, if something I had created became a knife at the throat of my own country. And if you are then convinced, pursue Gabriel; pursue him to the ends of the earth, for wherever he is, there will be nothing but waste.’

‘
No
,’ said Lord Culter, and stood up.

The emotionless voice beside Adam Blacklock stopped, and he felt, in the gloom, Lymond give some movement, at once controlled. It was odd, Adam thought, that Lymond’s harshest opponent should be his brother, and that each man had such power to hurt the other.

A sound at the door made him look round again. It was Margaret again, with the three men, each bearing a taper. Light ran round the room from bracket to bracket, garlanding the tapestried walls, turning the table into a ruddy pool round which the bright, fleshy faces calyxed in linen and gauze and fancy Swiss bobbin-lace looked
with surmise and relief, each to the other. ‘How would the other verdicts run?’ thought Adam. Margaret Erskine, pale and big-eyed, was already biased against Gabriel, and was a loyal adherent of Lymond’s, Adam knew, for many years now. Sybilla, for all her sharp, unsentimental brain, was a kindred soul with her younger son, and Lady Jenny from jealousy alone would support any man who maligned Joleta. Add Janet Beaton and a natural wish to find someone—anyone—who would exorcise the misery of her stepson’s death, and you could say that the women were on Francis Crawford’s side.

One might have expected as much, and in the counsels of the Dowager and the power they could bring him in men—the Flemings, the Grahams, the Scotts—this was not a trifle. But Adam knew, and Lymond knew, that unless he had convinced these men—Fergie Hoddim, Alec Guthrie, Thompson who had no principles you could appeal to, his own brother Culter and, Adam supposed, he himself whom Lymond had trusted some of the way at least, and whose self-respect he had rescued by trusting him.… Unless he had induced these men by logic, by half-proofs, by the compressed, powerful current of the prosecution thus coldly concluded to believe that what he said was correct, he was beaten at last.

And on Lymond’s face, clearly seen for the first time since Richard had made his disclaimer, you could tell that he had braced himself to meet the first proof of his failure. Elbows on the table, chin propped on his two thumbs, he sat quietly, his lashes lowered, his lips pressed against his interlaced fingers. He did not move again when Richard repeated more clearly, ‘No. There will be no call to pursue Graham Malett then or any time in the future. We must cut him down
now
.’

The heavy lids lifted. After a long moment, Lymond lowered his hands with great care from his face to the table, and said, ‘Why?’ Beside him, Adam noticed, Sybilla’s blue eyes were running with tears.

There was mild impatience on Lord Culter’s pleasant, undistinguished face. ‘Because you have done all that skill could devise to present a detached case, and failed. Because you are asking for help, and you hate asking for help. Because of our mother’s evidence, and Blacklock’s evidence, and Margaret’s evidence, and the fact that you asked Guthrie and Hoddim and the fact that they came. This may be,’ said Richard with unexpected wry humour, ‘a crusade conducted by the Culter family solo in a band of dissentients, but I am with you.’