The Disorderly Knights (92 page)

‘All right,’ said Jerott suddenly. ‘But for what do you substitute the great ideals, the discipline of the Church? Every army follows something. You know your own power. In a month you will have all the men of St Mary’s in your hand. Is hero-worship any better? And what if the next leader they follow is Gabriel or his like?’

‘There will be no successor,’ said Lymond abruptly. ‘That is the
sine qua non
. When I can no longer control it, St Mary’s disappears. I have made every possible provision; in the officers I have chosen, and in the financial arrangements I have made. Only if the company had gone to France as part of a national army could Gabriel have afforded to have armed and maintained it, and even then, a good third would, I believe, have rejected him and stayed behind.… It was dangerous.

‘Of course it was dangerous. I thought, I believe, to repay a debt by giving my own land for a few months the security it had lacked for forty years.… But we are still infants, where emotion finds outlet in force and force is met by emotion, and people cannot conceive of themselves even yet as nations instead of as families … and certainly not as a brotherhood of nations, when even sister religions bring their armies against one another.… Take heart,’ said Lymond at last, with cold, exhausted irony. ‘I shall convey them abroad.’

D’Oisel watched him. ‘You could, if you wished, stand at the Queen Mother’s right hand.’ And Jerott, hearing, wondered if he guessed why Francis Crawford had been sent to Malta by Montmorency of France: to remove him, perhaps for all time, from the influence of the de Guises. Lymond had put his life, for that short space, at the disposal of the Knights of St John—his life, but nothing else. He had chosen a different destiny. And that, now, had brought him the offer that the Constable, long ago, had foreseen.

Lymond shook his head. The blood he had lost, the long bouts of alternate violence and strain, the patience and self-control he had had
to bring, now, to this deliberate and studied examination in the midst of dizziness and physical pain and all the devastating reaction of the news he had just received had, together, brought him at last to the end of the long night. He said, ‘No.… We are not, either, a royal tool. If you are short of violent and persevering men to fight your battles in France … send the Kerrs. Jerott … the men should get back to their quarters. I shall join you all shortly. Philippa, my dear lass.…’

Philippa Somerville, standing back a little, did not withdraw her arm. In her white face, a shadow of motherly irritation appeared. ‘Has no one here any sense? Be quiet and sit down. The world will look after itself for a night, without your hand on the rim.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ said Richard Crawford quietly, and Lymond lifted his head. ‘Oh, Richard. Timely as ever. I want.…’

‘I know what you want,’ said Lord Culter comfortably, and hooked an arm under his brother’s stained shoulders.

‘I doubt it,’ said Lymond drily. ‘I want you to take me across the church. Is Sybilla.…?’

‘She is waiting for you,’ said Richard. ‘Later, when you are ready. Where do you want to go, for God’s sake? You can hardly.…’

‘Over there,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘To Lauder’s chapel. Can you help me, do you think?’

He got there, in the end, to the small and beautiful chapel against St Giles’s south-west wall, founded, sixty years back, by Alexander Lauder of Blyth in honour of God, the Virgin Mary, and the Archangel Gabriel.

And there, while the great church emptied and his brother waited, his face grim, outside, Francis Crawford walked forward, and genuflected, and laid on the altar the shining ribbon of his sword, Graham Malett’s blood dark on the blade. Then he spoke, his voice clear and low, before the shrine he had chosen, to affirm to his brother, his mother, and all those in the dimming vaults of the church who dared not come close, that the altar prevailed, eternal, untarnished, over the memory of the enemy who carried its name.

‘My son … my son,’ said Francis Crawford before the blurred, failing candles, their light searching over his disordered, bent head and closed eyes and the long, scarred lines of his hands, laid flat on the steel.

‘So small a spirit, to lodge such sorrows as mankind has brought you. Live … live.… Wait for me, new, frightened soul. And though the world should reel to a puny death, and the wolves are appointed our godfathers, I will not fail you, ever.’

Edinburgh, October
1963—
February
1965.

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
BY
D
OROTHY
D
UNNETT

“The finest living writer of historical fiction.”
—
Washington Post Book World

THE GAME OF KINGS

Dorothy Dunnett introduces her irresistible hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman of elastic morals and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

Fiction/0-679-77743-1

QUEENS’ PLAY

Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

Fiction/0-679-77744-X

THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.

Fiction/0-679-77745-8

PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE

Lymond cuts a desperate path across the Ottoman empire of Suleiman the Magnificent in search of a kidnapped child, an effort that may place this adventurer in the power of his enemies. What ensues is a subtle and savage chess game whose gambits include treachery, enslavement, and torture and whose final move compels Lymond to face the darkest ambiguities of his own nature.

Fiction/0-679-77746-6

THE RINGED CASTLE

Between Mary Tudor’s England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible lies a vast distance indeed, but forces within the Tudor court impel Lymond to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. In this barbaric land, Lymond finds his gifts for intrigue and survival tested to the breaking point, yet these dangers are nothing beside those of England, where Lymond’s oldest enemies are conspiring against him.

Fiction/0-679-77747-4/Available in September 1997

CHECKMATE

Francis Crawford returns to France to lead an army against England. But even as the soldier scholar succeeds brilliantly on the battlefield, his haunted past becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond’s parentage possesses the power to control him—or destroy him.

Fiction/0-679-77748-2/Available in September 1997

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