He visited, also, the few powerful landowners supporting the Crown in the south-west, and made sure that the Earl of Cassillis, Lord Maxwell and Sir James Drumlanrig knew exactly what he was doing. This meant long hours of riding, a brief call, and a quick return to St Mary’s to control developing affairs, but it was done efficiently and without fuss, usually with no more than two officers and a score of men at his back. It was when Lymond was returning from one of these fast, scattered tours with something like nine hours in the saddle behind him, that he was greeted at St Mary’s with the news that Thompson had been for two days at Dumbarton and must see him before leaving next day.
Thompson, that well-known sea robber, had been recruited, Jerott knew, to instruct in saltwater warfare that summer. It seemed to him, and he found to Gabriel also, that the business could wait. But Lymond, stopping only to change horses and issue brief directions, simply continued his journey to Dumbarton, a matter of eighty-five miles and a full day of hilly travelling.
Tait and Bell had been with him to Carlisle. Lymond left them at St Mary’s and chose Adam Blacklock and Jerott to continue, to Jerott’s disgust. And the tolerant counsel of Gabriel, to whom Brother Blyth had described with contempt Lymond’s conduct at Dumbarton once before, reduced that young knight to impotent silence. All right: how would Sir Graham prise Francis Crawford from his bedfellows?
But once they left St Mary’s, there was so much of moment to discuss and to plan that Jerott lost sight of his grievance, and even Adam Blacklock abandoned his stutter. They stopped at Midculter to pick up Lymond’s brother, who wanted to discuss a cargo with Thompson, but to Jerott’s profound relief saw no sign of Sybilla or Gabriel’s sister Joleta.
By late evening they got to Dumbarton, and dismounted at the Governor’s Barque, where the candles shone in the unshuttered casements of the inn’s single hired parlour, to show that Thompson had come, and was waiting.
In eight years, Scottish pirates had taken a total of something like two million crowns in gold out of Flemish shipping alone. Jockie Thompson, who had a number of other imaginative sidelines besides, believed in making the most of his brief visits to land. Instead of his old leather jacket and stained, salt-rotted breech-hose, he was hung like a hoy with a six-pound furred gown, as Lymond noted aloud, and the gold chains like futtock shrouds on his chest. The black beard and the tough brosy face glistened with fat as he swallowed ox tongues swilled down with Bordeaux and groused about the lightage fees at Dover these days and the customars who, far from taking a gentleman’s word, would drive an iron rod through your bales to see if you had hidden hackbuts.
‘And had you?’ said Lord Culter cheerfully. Relaxed, well-fed round their private table under the flickering tapers, they had disposed before the meal was half over with his personal business and, he guessed, were only waiting for his tactful withdrawal later on to complete whatever transaction Lymond and Thompson were entertaining. It was, he knew, a matter of arranging for Thompson to take the St Mary’s officers, in groups, for sea training that summer. It did not need much imagination to guess that what they would practise was piracy, nor that what Lymond was here at the moment to receive was contraband stores, to keep Thompson sweet.
Richard Crawford watched his younger brother, who had spent the better part of a day and a night in the saddle without turning a hair, handle this explosive brute of a seaman like an artist while Blacklock, his stiff leg stretched under the table, looked on smiling and the other fellow, the handsome, smouldering knight Francis dragged with him everywhere, was despite himself drawn into the game.
‘Was I smuggling hackbuts?’ said Thompson now, moving the red wine aside and taking up the aqua-vitæ. ‘By God’s breid I was, but not in the cargo: in the fender casks. I tell ye, I had a dainty hand on the tiller yon day, drawing Magdalena off frae the jetty. Ae dunt on the planking, and guns would’ve burst from they fenders like a nursing mother out o’ her bodice.… Man, are ye weel? Ye’re not drinking!’
‘I’m not drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ Lymond said crisply. Thompson’s voice, as always, had early grown thick. As always, it was not likely to get any thicker, since although Thompson’s capacity was phenomenal, he had a head like an ox.
Now, he flung back his head and, without swallowing, let the blistering spirit run down his throat. Then he banged down his cup and refilled it, staring at Lymond. ‘Better men than you, friend, have yet to see Jock Thompson drunk.’
He turned his seamed, seaman’s eyes on Lord Culter. ‘It’s a grief, just, tae see a friend gone girlish as to the guts. I see you’ve not spared the flagon, my lord, and there you are, sober as one of the Pope’s knights.’ He had drunk just enough to be quarrelsome. ‘So drink sends the wee fellow foolish?’
Blacklock, raising his brows, looked down at his long hands. But Jerott Blyth, a glint in his black eyes, watched Lymond. Last year in France, he well knew from the gossip at home, Francis Crawford had nearly wrecked his career and succeeded in poisoning himself with unbridled drinking. In Malta he had been moderate. Here in Scotland he had stopped drinking completely—taking no risks, it seemed clear, of being led into excess. It roused in Jerott, who had perfect self-discipline, an emotion of purest contempt.
‘… And,’ the old corsair was adding, pulling a face, ‘you’ll not be one nowadays for the lassies. Devil a rape; barely a wee lonesome damn. Jesus, it’s a wonder ye’ll sit with an auld hoor like myself.’
‘I’ll sit with you as long as I can stand you, but I’m damned if I’m going to bore myself to death launching imitation orgies to satisfy your sense of power,’ said Lymond without visible emotion. ‘If you’ve finished your unsavoury meal, then sit back and drink yourself into a coma while I attempt to dispose of our business.’
It was the signal for Culter to leave and he began to do so, with amusement, promising himself to find out later from Francis what had happened. Thompson’s voice, raised unexpectedly, halted him. ‘Aye. But I only do business with men.’
‘Obviously. With drunk men,’ said Lymond patiently. ‘I suppose you know if you take any more yourself you’ll be as full as a sow?’
‘I can hold it,’ said Thompson coldly, uplifting and emptying his cup in instant response. ‘It’s a right shame you’re feart. Ye’ll never know now, will ye, what the news is about Cormac O’Connor?’
Lymond’s eyes met his brother’s and Lord Culter, a little more sober than a moment before, achieved his withdrawal. Blacklock, who had not moved, said quietly, ‘Would you like us to leave?’ But before Lymond could answer, Thompson said jovially, ‘Leave? What for should ye leave? We’ve only St Mary’s business to discuss, if we even do that. I keep my gossip for a man who has a man’s way with liquor.’
In the ensuing brief silence, Jerott saw that Adam Blacklock’s attention was fixed on Francis Crawford, and that Lymond’s blue eyes were blazing with irritation and anger. Lymond said, his voice soft, ‘You’ve been too long at sea, butty. You need a lesson in shore drinking and shore manners both.’
And when Blacklock, his face anxious, made a sudden move to demur, Lymond turned on him, then rising, flung open the door. ‘… But let’s clear out the ranks of the sanctified first, before we exercise our inordinate appetites against the Lord God Almighty.’
And in silence, Jerott Blyth and Blacklock both left.
Long after midnight, a man waiting patiently in the dark courtyard of the inn saw the lit casement window of the pirate Thompson’s room swing slowly open, and Lymond stood silently there, his hand on the latch, the half-spent candles rimming his crisp hair with silver. The good smell of horses and leather, the stink of the midden, the night breathings of spring blossom and trees reached him out of the darkness.
Behind him, singing softly to himself, the pirate Thompson sat a little sunk in his chair, wet beard lost in wet beaver. He was not noticeably drunker than he had been over his supper: just a little hazy of smile and over friendly of manner. He had, in a sense, won. He had made Lymond
drink with him, glass for glass, since the other three men had gone. Made him, in the sense that there was information which Francis Crawford badly wanted, and which Thompson’s own good sense of preservation had already warned him it was dangerous to give.
Once before, at Dumbarton, when for the price of a sapphire, he had purchased the woman Hough Isa, he had eluded Lymond’s questions on this preposterous ground. On the other hand, he liked the man. Lymond had done him good service at Tripoli, and he owed him an act of friendship. So, with his own brand of logic, Thompson had done the thing in his own way. If Lymond would let dignity go hang and crack a bottle—several bottles—with his old gossip, ending in whatever state of high foolishness he feared, Jockie Thompson would impart his tidings from Ireland.
And that was what he, Jockie Thompson, had done. He had started talking, in fact, a little earlier than he had meant, because they were drinking so blithely together, and his stories had gone over uncommonly well. So Lymond knew that he, Thompson, had been running arms and English harp groats into Ireland, and in the Earl of Desmond’s dank castle had made rendezvous with Cormac O’Connor, that well-known rebel whose father was in an English prison and whose life till now had been devoted to trying to turn the English out of Ireland.
But Cormac O’Connor, that big wily brute, was also Thompson’s own partner in a neat little swindle whereby merchants insured ships and cargo they knew very well to be about to be robbed by Thompson and his friends, and afterwards got the insurance money and at least part of the cargo.
‘So you told me,’ had said Lymond pleasantly. ‘You didn’t tell me, however, that the Kerrs were clients of yours.’
He was a smart fellow, was that Crawford. ‘They werena,’ Thompson replied. ‘Not then. They are now. But if they’re boasting about it, I’ll cut their gizzards.’
‘They are, but I’ve warned them that you would do exactly that. You also said that George Paris acted as your joint agent.’
‘Aye.’ It was about George Paris, the well-known secret agent used so freely in the plots between Ireland and France to oust the English from Dublin, that he had to tell. ‘There’s a queer rumour come from the Irish exiles in London that’s just come to the ears of Desmond. I was there when he told O’Connor. The story goes that George Paris is a double agent.’
‘Oh?’ Lymond did not seem specially impressed. Thompson repeated gravely, ‘A double agent. Working for the English as well. Taking money from the Privy Council. Giving away, maybe, all the plans to throw the English out.’
‘Well, who’s worried?’ said Lymond. ‘France is trying to make friends with England; she won’t try anything silly now, whatever friend Cormac is hoping. The only Irish conspirators George Paris could denounce are rebels already, and the Scottish Government, while offering their wholehearted moral support, has done nothing very active to promote the said throwing-out. But if you’re anxious, why doesn’t Cormac tell his friend the Scottish Queen Mother, and she can have Paris imprisoned on some trumped-up charge?’
‘He’s in France,’ said Thompson, avoiding his eye.
‘He is now. But he was in London at the beginning of the year, handing over gifts from the French to the English King.… Jockie, my gentle écumeur de mer, that of course would be when the Privy Council agreed to employ him. Then he came up here and conspired with the Queen Mother. I was told he even sent rings and messages and secret expressions of profoundest goodwill to Cormac’s father in jail—the appalling deceiver,’ said Lymond cheerfully. ‘Why wasn’t the Queen Dowager told then? Oh Jockie, Cormac wants the money from the insurance parties, and can’t bear to lose Paris’s help? Ireland, Ireland! Where are your true sons now?’
Thompson was not, for the moment, amused. ‘I told him anyway that the woman O’Dwyer was deid,’ he said carelessly. ‘He didna ken she was taken to Tripoli, and he didna fancy the way he thinks you got rid of the lass in the end. I told him it wasna deliberate, but I doubt he’s no friend of yours.’
‘He never was,’ said Lymond. It was then, Thompson remembered, that he got up suddenly and pouring out a whole beakerful of aquavitæ, opened the pirate’s whiskered mouth with an iron forefinger and thumb, and emptied it in.
With the elegance of long practice, Thompson’s epiglottis went into action and the spirit flowed placidly down. At the end, ‘Ye didna need tae do that!’ said Jockie Thompson indignantly. ‘I can open ma mou’ without being helped to it.’
His hand falling, Lymond looked down and against his will, it seemed, laughed. ‘I suppose you can,’ he said, and tossing the cup away, walked to the window.
He walked, perhaps a little carefully, and his eyes were a little too bright; but the corsair’s gaze followed him, frankly admiring. What the embargo had been, who could tell? But there was no doubt about this. Francis Crawford could drink.
Then Lymond opened the window, and a man watched below.
*
If he had been watching still five minutes later, which he was not, he would have seen the candles snuff out as Thompson, fully clothed, rolled happily into bed; and just before that, the progress of a single taper from window to window as Lymond moved down the long gallery to his room.
From the shadows behind his just-open door, Adam Blacklock, who had had a long vigil, saw Lymond reach his own door, open it, and stop dead, the light from a hidden fire bright on his face. There was a pause, then Francis Crawford spoke sharply to someone within.
‘What are you doing here?’
If there was an answer, Adam Blacklock couldn’t hear it. Behind him, Jerott’s light breathing went evenly on. Blacklock waited until Lymond’s door silently closed, then shut his own with equal sound-lessness and went back to bed.
*
Had he been quite sober and quite fresh, Lymond would probably not have spoken at all. As it was, he had the presence of mind to shut his door, and leaning back on it, to gaze across the small tavern bedchamber at his unsolicited guest.
Seated in dogged discomfort by the hearth, her riding cloak clutched sweatily about her, her hair falling sheer to her knees and the colour itself of the flames, Joleta Malett was waiting. Lymond’s icy blue stare fell on her; Lymond’s blurred voice snapped, ‘What are you doing here?’ and great, clear aquamarine tears sprang into her eyes and fell sparkling down her pink baby skin. With a kind of strangled grunt, she put the back of one wrist to her nose, and scrabbling frantically in her skirts with the other hand, gave a real sob of anguish. ‘My handkerchief!’
Lymond stayed where he was. ‘I haven’t got one,’ he said. ‘Blow your nose on your bloody sleeve. I won’t look. I suppose everyone in Lennox and district knows that you’re here?’
The lorn apricot head shook. ‘Luke and Martin came with me yesterday. I’ve got a room in another wing. Lady Culter and Madame Donati think I’m with Jenny.’ She gave another sob, and cut it off. ‘You’ve been hours.’
‘My apologies, of course,’ said Lymond politely. ‘But I wasn’t aware that I had invited you. How did you know I was coming?’
Wrapped modestly in her furry cloak, in the appalling heat of the room, she could look beautiful even when sniffing. ‘Graham said that Thompson was waiting for you, and that you were in the south and would be sure to come soon. So I came to wait for you.’
‘In the belief that no one would notice an unescorted female of good family putting up at a shore tavern with two grooms. You may as well divest your modest attractions of their outer wrapping. My hot young blood can stand it. And your reputation has presumably gone anyway. You came to wait for me. Why?’
Slowly, Joleta took off her cloak. Underneath, her dress was a young green: a web-like wool finely gathered under her breasts and covering her soft arms down to the wrists. Her little, sparkling teeth whose sibilants frosted her every phrase were sunk in her lip. Taking off her cloak was an effort, socially as well as physically: her golden skin was deep pink.
Lymond made no effort to help. Only, as the fur fell to the ground and she sat
in her meadowland of green, twisting her hands, he drew a long, quiet breath and expelled it before he repeated, ‘Why?’
‘To say I’m sorry.’ Her chin, so like Gabriel’s, was up; her eyes, so like Gabriel’s, were pleadingly, defiantly, on him. ‘I’m sorry about Kevin. I’m s-sorry about losing my temper. I don’t want you to hate me.’
Lymond shifted his position, fractionally, against the door. ‘Sir Graham doesn’t want me to hate you.’
She flushed again, and then paled, so that the ginger freckles contoured all the exquisite face. ‘I know. But this isn’t to please Graham. And you must know Graham wouldn’t let me do this.’
‘Why ever not?’ said Lymond ironically. ‘You’re perfectly safe; it’s only your reputation that’s ruined. I be lightly drunken, as the man said, and have but little appetite to meat.’
Tears stood in her eyes but did not, this time, spill over. She stood up. ‘You don’t forgive me.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Francis Crawford lightly. ‘I dislike you, Joleta.’
There was a moment of complete and cataclysmic surprise. Then the tears, unregarded, fell from Joleta’s immense, open eyes, her jaw dropped and she said, ‘But you can’t dislike me!’
Laughter, remotely, stirred in the cool blue eyes. ‘Well, that was genuine, anyway,’ he said. ‘Don’t strain yourself trying to believe it. But I am a strange man to meddle with, that’s all.’
Her dismay had fetched her half across the small room. In front of him, ‘Don’t you desire me?’ said Joleta, and flushed scarlet again.
The Disorderly Knights Page 40
