The Disorderly Knights (8 page)

Donna Donati smiled, and with one cool hand took the liberty of straightening Kate’s half-attached sleeve. ‘I have dealt with many rogues in my years,’ she said. ‘Do not concern yourself.’

The widow Luckup arrived two days later on muleback, stayed the night with Joleta, and went back the next day without grumbling, accompanied, as Kate later found, by three silver plates and a pair of her dead husband’s thick woolly breeches; which alone in her room she wept over, ridiculously, before blowing her nose and sailing forth to see how Joleta did.

Joleta, blessedly burning with new life, had eaten her first light meal for a week and was sitting propped up by her pillows, running her fingers over Kate’s lute and singing, absurdly, the extemporized praises of Trotty. Richard had been right. Quiet and sick and very young, the vein had not shown. But the girl in her own right, and apart from the heavenly gift of her looks, was a person of character.

As the days of recovery went by, Philippa, at Kate’s wish, spent a good deal of time with Joleta. Abrupt, forthright as her mother without, just yet, her mother’s saving grace of humility and wit, Philippa sat at a loss and studied the other girl like a farm labourer at a flower show, while Joleta Reid Malett, whose courage was of the order of her brother’s and whose self-discipline, on occasion, went far beyond her years, willed herself better, rose, walked, dressed and moved to the garden, sang, played and indulged in a ferocious gift of
mimicry, talking to all and everyone she met, from the kitchen boy to Kate’s stubborn steward, and lit Flaw Valleys as with Mediterranean sunlight from within.

To Philippa she told a little of her quiet life on Malta, but otherwise spoke rarely of herself. It was Philippa she was eager to know about; Philippa’s father and the war against the Scots; the coming of Tom Erskine to their door for the first time; and Lymond.

She asked Philippa directly, at last, why she disliked Lord Culter’s younger brother and Philippa, hot-cheeked under three years’ silence, told of the wartime raid when Lymond had broken into the house and had questioned her, a child of ten, against her parents’ wishes. The long room; Gideon, whitefaced, begging the stranger to leave the child alone; and Kate hugging her on her knees, her cheeks wet with tears.

‘But your parents overlooked it, didn’t they?’ said Joleta in her sane, friendly voice. ‘And you aren’t enemies now.’ They were brushing each other’s hair, Joleta’s firm fingers dragging the brush swiftly and effectively over and over through Philippa’s insignificant locks. Her own, in a single shining fall, reached to her hips over her robe; and her robe fell, as it should, over the soft rises of her young body. Philippa, flat as a kipper in front, said savagely, ‘What’s it matter? He could browbeat a child, whatever the motive. And he lives like a hog. I hate him.’ And to her own horror, Philippa broke into tears.

Joleta’s warm arms enfolded her, and Joleta’s freckled cheek pressed against her own. ‘Pippa, listen,’ said the clear voice in her ear. ‘Middle-aged ladies often imagine they have fallen in love. It doesn’t mean anything. Your mother is very sensible, you know.’

Philippa Somerville’s head jerked back, then her body, as she forced herself from Joleta’s gentle clasp. Then, stuffing a not over-clean hand into her mouth, Kate’s daughter fled from the room.

She and Joleta continued to meet and talk after that, but never again lapsed into the topic of Kate’s private affections. Nor, to do Joleta justice, did she give the matter more than a passing, fanciful thought. It was Philippa who could not bear to have her mind read.

*

Kate was relieved of her guests, in the end, by Tom Erskine himself, on his way back from weeks of negotiating the final terms of the peace treaty between Scotland and England at Norham.

Although he could not be said to understand Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter and her two sons, Tom Erskine was haplessly fond of them all. And on receiving Lord Culter’s request that he should
return via Flaw Valleys and escort the recovered Joleta and her governess to the Culter home at Midculter castle, he had no trouble in imagining the arguments that polite request had provoked.

In strict fact, there had been the nearest thing to outright battle that had ever occurred at the Culters’. Richard had said, receiving a cramped and colourless note from Madame Donati, ‘That Malta girl is better again.’

‘Well?’ had said his mother unhelpfully, while his wife, straightening out a smile, bent over her sewing.

‘Where’s she to go? Have you got her into a convent?’

‘Why, is she entering religion?’ had inquired Sybilla, her blue eyes amazed.

Richard had paused for a fresh breath. ‘She has to stay somewhere until her brother comes for her. Do you want him to find we’ve put her into Sandilands’s care, knowing what he’s like?’

‘Well then, she’d better come here, hadn’t she?’ said the Dowager absently, picking up some silks Mariotta had dropped. Her daughter-in-law shot her a swift look and bent again to her task. Experience with the Scottish family she had married into at least had taught her when to keep quiet.

‘Mariotta has the child. To ask her to look after another—’

‘Mariotta sees her son just as often as you do, and no more; and quite right too, with the best wet-nurse in Lanarkshire looking after him. In any case, I gather the girl is sixteen, not six months, and your real concern is in case we open a brothel?’

‘
Mother
!’ said Lord Culter and went scarlet, something only Sybilla could have achieved. His wife, in appalled ecstasy, dropped her sewing and gazed at them both, her hands over her mouth. Sybilla herself, after a moment, went on evenly. ‘I cannot be hurt by Francis, my dear. What have you seen in France that makes you so afraid for this child?’

Lord Culter moved to the window and back: a square, hard-muscled family man with cares and responsibilities in plenty, wearied as he had been wearied all his life with the task of separating his brother’s wake from his own. At length he said plainly, ‘I’m afraid for them both. You wouldn’t expect morality and restraint at the French Court. Licence is the mode and Francis has been setting the fashion. You’ve heard, I suppose, of Oonagh O’Dwyer. She was only among the more reputable of his indulgences. He has had a surfeit of that. He’ll want something different now. Something,’ said Richard, exasperation only half suppressed in his voice, ‘like falling romantically into young love.’

Sybilla’s pointed face, upturned to his, had not moved. ‘Well of course. Why not?’ she asked. ‘The girl is quick and well-read. She won’t stay sheltered for long. Or do you think she will take against
him?’ Sybilla cocked her head to one side, eyeing her older son. ‘But, do you know, it would do him so much good if she did.’

‘She’s very young,’ Mariotta couldn’t forbear remarking.

‘How old do you think he is?’ said Sybilla placidly. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t want him hanging about my petticoats for the rest of my life. He is, you must admit, a little
disruptive
in the home. What’s your anxiety then, Richard? You think he has no self-restraint, and they will simply ruin each other before the grown-ups can prevent it? But, my dear boy, the child has been brought up in the Religion, with a brother in one of the strictest Christian Orders. She is unassailable, surely. And Francis.… Unless he has changed very much, Francis surely will respect her.’

It was unlike Sybilla to be complacent. In fact, it was only afterwards that Richard came to understand his mother’s wilful self-deception in the cause of her younger son’s need. At the time, unaccountably, he lost his head and said baldly, ‘Then I advise you to engage some fat, presentable maids, or better, choose one or two grooms for their looks. Otherwise, I shall leave you the task of explaining to Sir Graham Reid Malett the Culters’ stewardship of his sister.’

‘
That’s quite enough
,’ said Sybilla. She had risen, her eyes level with his chest, but he stepped back a pace. There was no amusement in her gaze. She continued, ‘What Francis does abroad is his own misfortune. What he does under my roof is what I and your wife permit him to do. I have never lacked authority over my sons yet; and to suggest that a guest in this house would be in danger is a stupidity verging on viciousness. The rest of your observations we shall consider unsaid.’

Her own face pale, Mariotta became aware that the incisive voice had stopped. Her husband, who could control without effort five thousand fighting men, stood saying nothing, his gaze on his mother, his temples moist as if the room were too hot. Then he said with difficulty, ‘I’m sorry. Of course he won’t touch her. But
she
might be attracted to him.’

‘And so?’ She would not compromise.

‘Mother, she’s too young for that kind of heartbreak. You talk of marriage. What do you think I’d give to see him married? What do you think it costs me to admit that marriage between Francis and any young, convent-bred girl is in all honour long past allowing?’

Sybilla’s face changed. The arched, pale brows drew together and she sat, a little too firmly, in the chair she had just vacated. Then her straight blue gaze fixed on Richard again. ‘Of course, he is too clever for his own good. But there is no vice there. None. I will not believe it.’

Lord Culter did not answer. There was a long silence, during
which Mariotta kept her head bent, her eyelashes wet, and the Dowager’s face became whiter and whiter. Then at last, as the pause threatened to become unbearable, ‘Then where,’ said Sybilla evenly, ‘do you suggest we send her?’

Richard’s tremendous exhalation plumbed his shattering relief. He said, ‘Would Jenny take her, at Boghall?’

It was the solution. Lady Fleming, exquisite widow of royal birth, was newly back at Boghall Castle from France, returned to bear a son out of wedlock to the French King. Of her seven children by the late Lord Fleming only Margaret, now married to Tom Erskine, could ever control Jenny Fleming; and Margaret, now in France with the Queen Mother, would soon be home. At Boghall, under the eyes of Margaret and Tom Erskine, Joleta Malett would be safe.

‘Her brother will certainly not approve of Jenny,’ said Sybilla thoughtfully. ‘But then, if I know Jenny, she will be far too interested in returning to France to acquire another little insurance against her old age, to trouble about Joleta. Joleta would be virtually in the care of the Erskines. And the Erskines—’

‘—know better than any the dangers of Francis with time on his hands,’ said Lord Culter gratefully. It was, as a matter of fact, the first argument with his mother that he had ever won, and had he known it, the most useless.

*

So Tom Erskine called at Flaw Valleys to take the Malett girl and her governess home to Boghall, and saw and caught his breath at the child’s looks, and noted that, since Gideon’s death, Kate had lost weight.

She was the last person to seek pity. He treated her to a recital of Jenny’s accouchement and the birth of the King of France’s acknowledged son, and she laughed at that, but not at the little he told her of Lymond’s presence at the French Court, and his wife Margaret’s attempts to restrain him.

He was missing Margaret. Of their two years of marriage, she had spent eight months in France with the Queen Dowager, and it might be October before he would see her again. Kate, a perceptive soul, spent some time in talk of his wife before saying suddenly, ‘I hope they come back from France soon, Tom. I have a feeling that child Joleta is going to need help.’

‘She’s pretty lonely, I would guess,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll try to amuse her. She’ll have the young men round her anyway like bees.’

‘It’s a safe guess,’ said Kate, amused. ‘I’ve had three fights in the stockyard already. If she hadn’t been in bed ill half the time, God knows what would have happened.’

‘Trotty Luckup cured her, I hear?’

‘It looked like it,’ said Kate uncompromisingly. ‘She got her fee, anyway.’

‘That’s what I heard’, said Tom, relieved. ‘I came across the old dame the other day, in the cells for a drunken scold, and she had far more money on her than was likely—you know Trotty. But I was able to back up her story and save her a ducking. She’s no beauty, but fair’s fair.’

‘That woman will make her fortune,’ said Kate. ‘Look at all the advertisement her cure has had. My apothecary is threatening to disown me. You wouldn’t like to fall ill while you’re here so that I can give him a turn?’

‘Next time,’ said Tom earnestly, ‘I’ll fall off my horse on your doorstep.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Kate frankly. ‘He’s not very happy with bones. Something lingering with pimples in it is more in his line. Come when the apple trees are bearing, and help Philippa eat them.’

‘She hates Lymond still, does she?’ said Tom Erskine gently.

Kate nodded, and after a moment said, almost against her will, ‘I don’t think that other child would, though.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom Erskine cheerfully. ‘Joleta and Francis Crawford are unlikely to meet. And if they do, I’ll be there to see she’s the same girl that she is now, when Gabriel comes to fetch her.’

And he smiled over his shoulder, at where Joleta and Pippa between them were tumbling last-minute possessions into the cart, Philippa laughing and Joleta singing snatches of rather rude lyrics; and did not see the shiver that overtook Kate.

P
art
T
wo
THE EIGHT-POINTED
CROSS

   I:
Sailing Orders
(Mediterranean, June/July 1551)

  II:
The Tongue of Gabriel
(Maltese Archipelago, July 1551)

 III:
The Voice of the Prophet
(Maltese Archipelago, July 1551)

 IV:
The Rape of Galatian
(Mdina and Gozo, July 1551)