The Disorderly Knights

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Then, sensing she was there, Lymond turned, with the elastic smile and excessive charm which it was his habit to use, to provoke her to arid and more arid flights of sarcastic wit. ‘Kate, my dear? Haven’t your raspberries been marvellous this year? Come and be licked; I haven’t dined yet,’ he said.

  Kate looked down at her stained gown. ‘I know. I ought to leave it to the maids,’ she said. Then, taking his hands as he came to her, she turned him round until the light from the big windows fell, inevasibly, full on his face.

  There was a little pause. ‘Your stains are showing too,’ said Kate. ‘Don’t you trust your servants either, or don’t they trust you?’

  ‘Trust is a secular word in our part of the world,’ said Lymond. He drew away slightly. ‘We operate on Faith. The heavenly light from the navel. Fed on recherché meats to sacred melodies, like the lion of Heliopolis.’

  ‘With a public whipping-post outside?’

  ‘You know too much,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s necessary. And applied with a fearful justice. Or the mercenaries, of course, would leave.’

  ‘Don’t your monks in armour complain?’ said Kate, her voice bantering; pure distress in her eyes. Even her concern about Philippa had gone.

  ‘An Order that bastinadoes its slaves? They’d find it difficult, thank God. I have enough trouble with a growing tendency among the lower ranks to divide us into the forces of light and of darkness. I don’t mind being labelled devilish but I do mind being regarded as unlucky. The only way to answer that is by a string of successes. Which we have had.’

  ‘But not by luck. I know you don’t want to sit down,’ said Kate rapidly. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about what’s happened. I know you don’t want to distress me. I know you want to tell me quickly about Philippa and go. But if you will countenance an onlooker’s opinion, I think you should go to bed first.’

  There was an inimical silence. It might of course have been better put. But at least she would be spared the obvious response. In the end, Lymond said merely, ‘Thank you, but no. I must go back.’

  ‘To hold somebody’s trembling hand?’

  ‘To hold somebody’s trembling hand with a dagger in it,’ he said.

  That was the point at which to leave it. Kate didn’t. She said baldly, ‘You’ve left St Mary’s to itself for three days. If you daren’t leave it any longer, after all the time you’ve devoted to it, then you must know you’ve failed.’

  Lymond said softly, ‘That is the only thing you may not say to me.… Kate, superb Kate: I will not be mothered.’

  ‘Mothered!’ Kate’s small, undistinguished face was black with annoyance. ‘I would sooner mother a vampire. I am merely trying to point out what your browbeaten theorists at St Mary’s ought surely to have mentioned in passing. Health is a weapon of war. Unless you obtain adequate rest, first your judgement will go, and then every other qualification you may have to command, and either way, the forces of light will have a field-day in the end.’

  There were two big chairs near him, one of them in the immediate path of the flood of sunshine creeping over the polished floor from her big western windows. Kate sat on the arm of the other and said, ‘I know you better, by the way, than to suppose that you came here to do the sensible thing by persuasion. No one would be more stunned than I should if you agreed.’

  ‘I haven’t got that sort of pride,’ said Lymond drily, and smiled. ‘I’m going back, Kate, as soon as we have talked, you and I. I’ve spent six months and a small fortune training so that I or anyone else at St Mary’s can handle and go on handling an emergency for quite a long time, and throw off fatigue reasonably well at the end. This is, if you like, an emergency. When I’ve dealt with it, I shall lie about willingly with a flagon of wine and a nymph.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Kate coldly. ‘Like Terminus: with no feet and arms.… In the meantime, I presume you may eat? Your henchmen are being fed, and you’ll look a trifle quaint making a ceremonial stop to feed by yourself on the way home if you don’t. I promise not to pollute the pork chops with drugs. I shan’t even insist you sit down to it, although if you’re not giddy with circling the room like a blowfly, I am.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lymond rudely, and sat down in the other chair. ‘Does that satisfy you? Kate, I came here to talk about Philippa. I know she got home safely from the tower. Did you understand my letter?’

  ‘I understood that you were sorry you struck her unconscious,’ said Kate. ‘The rest was a little ambiguous. I gathered you wanted me to keep her at home and under my eye. I have.’

  ‘You have. Where is she now, for example?’ asked Lymond.

  ‘In the v——uh, henhouse,’ said Kate with equal serenity.

  ‘You’re a liar. She’s in the village, with Archie Abernethy after her. Kate, I don’t like these little accidents that happen to Philippa. When I say under your eye I mean it. Until you hear from me, I want you to watch her, or have her watched by someone you can trust, night and day. Unless …’

  For the first time, Lymond hesitated, and Kate set her teeth. If she had been a man, she would have clipped him over the jaw for his own sake, as he had done to Philippa. But Philippa was her child, and she was not a man. Seething with sullen anguish, she had to let him go on. He said slowly, ‘I’ve hesitated to come, for it puts you in a thankless position. But for Philippa’s sake I have to try. Someone hinted to me once, a few months ago, that Philippa had some information of detriment to me. I gather it was nothing particularly deadly. It sounded like some childish effort to puncture my undoubted conceit … and God knows, if it would exorcise her fear of me, I don’t care who pulls the rug from under me. That doesn’t matter. Except that more and more it seems possible that Philippa’s dirty secret, whatever it is, may be the cause of these strange accidents. Suppose, Kate, that she has got hold of something that another person besides myself might want concealed?’

  The surprise to Kate was total. She stared at Lymond, scowling. ‘There’s nothing that I know of,’ she said. ‘And heavens, of course she won’t tell you herself now, less than ever. I think … I think in fairness you’ll have to tell me who told you.’

  ‘Graham Malett.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kate’s brown eyes became fixed. Gabriel. She said, ‘Sir Graham and Philippa met at Hampton Court, in my brother-in-law’s house, and became sister-spirits. I wonder if … George Paris’s bribe!’ exclaimed Kate in a burst of discovery, and blushed crimson to the raspberry-stained collar.

  There was a brief silence, during which Lymond’s face altered, and she could see exhaustion flattening him like unwanted armour. He said, ‘All right. I haven’t heard that. I forget we are on two sides. It may help you to know that I knew it already, if you will believe that. If Philippa really has proof that Paris is a double agent and Paris knows it, then he may be the source of your trouble. Or … you ought to know … that apart from his spying activities between France and Ireland and England and Scotland, he is involved in a small private transaction of extreme illegality partnered by a man called Cormac O’Connor and a wily old seaman who would seduce Philippa with the greatest of pleasure, but wouldn’t attack her, and affecting people like—my God,’ said Lymond, coming to an abrupt halt himself. ‘The Kerrs.’

  Kate said icily, ‘We are not on two sides. There was no need to spring into full national plumage and tell me all that. I was going to tell you anyway. George Paris was in Uncle Somerville’s house getting paid when Sir Graham visited Philippa. Paris and Sir Graham left about the same time in spite of Uncle Somerville’s efforts, and there was an accident on the river. Paris got into the water—he can’t swim—and Sir Graham dived in from his boat and rescued him. Profuse thanks to God and Sir Graham, and eventually the two part after exchanging names, Paris giving a false one. So Philippa says. She knew who he was, but didn’t tell Sir Graham.… We are not on two sides,’ repeated Kate angrily at the look on Lymond’s face. ‘It only seemed politic at the time. In any case, when Sir Graham collected
himself and his belongings again, wringing wet, and went to continue downriver, he found he had Paris’s cloak. And in the cloak, a bag containing a great sum of gold, in English money, and some writing from the English Privy Council.…’

  ‘Did Paris guess what had happened to it?’ said Lymond.

  Kate shook her head. ‘It was very heavy. He must have assumed it fell safely to the bottom.’

  ‘Then what did Sir Graham do with the cloak and the money?’ asked Lymond.

  ‘Tried to trace the owner, of course, under the name Paris had given him. And of course, couldn’t find him. So he went back to Uncle Somerville and asked him if he would pass the cloak and the money on to his recent visitor. Uncle Somerville didn’t recognize the name Sir Graham used, but he recognized the cloak and the money and the Privy Council’s note, and said of course he would see they got to the right quarters.’

  ‘And did they?’ said Lymond expectantly.

  ‘You don’t know Uncle Somerville,’ said Kate. ‘Or the Privy Council. It went straight back to the Treasury. And when poor Paris appeared with his tale of woe, to squeeze another purse from them, they told him to learn to swim next time he went boating with gold in his pocket, goodbye.’

  ‘Neat,’ said Lymond. She could make nothing of his expression. If it had been anyone else, she would have said he looked flummoxed. He said, looking at her for the first time for a while, ‘So you had to dry Sir Graham off and receive the gentle benison of his thanks. Did he pray a lot?’

  At the tone, Kate’s clever gaze sharpened. A moment’s thought, and illumination burst on her at last. ‘He was staying with Ormond, not with me. Francis! Is Graham Malett leading the forces of light? Is it Gabriel you are afraid of losing your disciples to?’

  So much for her plans. As the soporific sunlight began to embrace his chair, Francis Crawford leaped to his feet with such force that the seat crashed to the floor behind him. He said, ‘Sorry, Kate!’ without stopping and flung away from her, the full length of the room.

  There he halted, fighting for equanimity, and after a long, difficult silence turned, with obvious reluctance. Kate, standing, had been going to speak. Instead she stared at him, thinking numbly about hot milk and blankets, and saying nothing at all.

  He misread her face. He said quickly, ‘Don’t be frightened. You look as if you expected me to strike you.…’ And then, his eyes widening with tired shock, ‘Did you? Did you, Kate? Oh God, what does it matter then?’ he said, and dropping to his knees beside the stifling windowseat, pressed both hands hard over his eyes, his elbows buried in Kate’s old flock cushions.

  Above the white voile of his shirt a pulse was beating, very fast, under the fair skin. After a moment he said, without moving, ‘Would you give me a bed if I asked for one?’

  ‘My dear, my dear,’ said Kate, but to herself. ‘I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.’

  *

  In fact, he fell asleep, there where he knelt, and she had to persuade him to move. Once he had given in, he was too tired to undress; too tired to think any more. Kate had guessed rightly at overwork. He had said nothing to her of the useless, persistent, maddening trivia that disrupted his rest so that an hour uninterrupted was Nirvana; and several hours’ continuous sleep something he had ceased to expect.

  So he slept, in the end, on that same windowseat, with the shutters closed to keep out the sun: slept again, the moment he buried his head in the cushions. To Philippa, who stalked in defiantly halfway through these dispositions, Kate hissed, ‘Say one word and you go to the Nixons.’

  ‘I just came to make sure he hadn’t hit you,’ stated her daughter haughtily from the safety of the doorway, and marched out.

  Two hours later when Kate Somerville, for the sake of her nerves, had found Philippa something to do elsewhere in the house, and was trying to fasten her own attention on something other than that silent room upstairs, the clack of hooves far off on the dry, dusty road told of two, maybe three riders coming south fast, obviously bent for Flaw Valleys.

  One of them Philippa, materializing with astonishing speed, identified at once as Jerott Blyth. The others were soldiers.

  At the gatehouse Brother Jerott, with his curling raven hair and hawk nose over a beautiful Florentine cuirass, wasted no time. ‘Crawford of Lymond: is he here?’

  As in some deadly cycle, due to move round and round to eternity, Kate saw her child run down the long drive waving. ‘Mr Crawford? He’s here!’

  ‘He’s here,’ Kate repeated herself, to the unfriendly young man in her hall. ‘But I am sorry, he cannot be disturbed until morning. You are welcome to the hospitality of Flaw Valleys until then, if you wish. Or I should be pleased, of course, to convey your messages.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jerott, his eyes elsewhere. What was the attraction here, in God’s name? Not the little woman in the stained gown, surely? Or the plain fourteen-year-old who had been so courageous the night Trotty died? He said, having located the stairs, ‘He’s up there, is he? I’m sorry, but he’s wanted elsewhere.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ said Kate at her most deceptive. By some miracle she was on the bottom step, and Charles, all six feet of him, two steps behind. ‘Under no circumstances can Mr Crawford be disturbed until morning.’

  That got Jerott’s attention. ‘Why, who’s he with?’ he said, and Philippa, unseen behind, drew an enormous breath of sheer, crowing delight, and then choked on it, unuttered, in her throat. For there were tears of pure rage in her mother’s eyes, and her mother’s face, pale with controlled emotion, was turned towards herself. ‘Philippa, go to the kitchen,’ said Kate, in a voice her daughter never disobeyed. And to Jerott, ‘Mr Blyth, has it totally escaped the attention of yourself and your other vigorous, efficient and devoted companions of the Knights Hospitallers of St John that your commander is ill with fatigue?’

  ‘He’s sick, is he?’ said Jerott. He did not sound surprised. ‘Still, he’ll want to know, I expect. Next week’s Day of March has been put forward to tomorrow. We were warned last week, it appears, but the news didn’t reach us. Mr Crawford intended to go. But if he’s ill,’ said the dark young idiot cheerfully, ‘then no doubt he’ll send somebody else.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kate. ‘Tomorrow? That means leaving when?’

  ‘Now,’ said Jerott politely. ‘I really must ask you to wake him.’

  ‘And if,’ said Kate desperately, ‘Mr Crawford is too ill to delegate the command, how will his deputy be chosen?’

  Jerott stared. ‘There’s only one choice, Mistress Somerville. If Mr Crawford couldn’t lead, then it would fall to Sir Graham Reid Malett.’

  ‘You’d better go up,’ said Kate then ungraciously. ‘He isn’t ill—yet, but he’s suffering from severe overstrain, in my view; and of course, lack of sleep.’ Her sharp brown eyes sought and searched the brown face of this beautiful young man who had been kind to Philippa during that sickening episode of the old woman in the ditch, and who spoke so carelessly of his commander. ‘You haven’t known Mr Crawford long?’ she said.

  ‘We were boyhood … acquaintances,’ said Jerott. ‘And met again, last year, in Malta. I didn’t intend to appear unfeeling. I have, I need hardly say, an enormous respect for Mr Crawford’s ability.’

  ‘But not for his character?’ said Kate. ‘Mr Blyth, you should remember one thing. A celibate island life fighting Turks is no particular guarantee of early maturity. Take a little crone-like advice, and don’t rush your judgements.’

  Jerott gazed at her with his splendid, cold stare. ‘You are quite probably right. Sir Graham Malett, for instance, both admires him and holds him in deep affection.’

  This Christ-like naïveté of Sir Graham’s was, clearly, a matter for pain. Immune to the sarcasm, Kate suddenly pounced on the anomaly. ‘The feeling isn’t, I gather, reciprocal … Sir Graham isn’t bent, then, on usurping the leadership?’

  ‘Usurping it?’ Jerott laughed. ‘Mistress Somerville, Gabriel’s one
object in coming to Scotland has been to draw Lymond from his own recondite pursuits into a life worthy of himself and his gifts.’

  ‘And the army?’ said Kate. ‘When Francis Crawford has taken his vows, what of the army?’

  From the step above, impatient, Jerott Blyth looked down on her. ‘The army is his. He would lead it, as now. But as a holy weapon. For great purposes, not for mercenary gain. To bring peace to the brotherhood of man.’ He glanced upstairs and back, ironically, to Kate. ‘He’s flogged himself dizzy in a race that doesn’t exist.’

  All the same, forcing Lymond awake amused nobody; he was too exhausted for any gentle methods to work. It was a long time before he moved in his sleep, protesting at last; but soon after that he rolled over, his head in his hands, and heard Jerott’s story. Then he got up and made ready to leave.

  Kate had one last brief talk with Francis Crawford, after she had served a quick, generous meal to them all and had their horses made ready. ‘… About Philippa,’ she said, as his pretence of a meal came to an end, and he waited for her to rise. Jerott and the rest were outside already.

  ‘Yes?’ said Lymond. ‘You would like me to see her and apologize? I shall, of course. But I don’t think.…’

  ‘No, no. What possible good would that do? But I should like,’ said Kate, ploughing on, against the clock and Lymond’s own silent opposition, ‘to hear the whole tale of the Hot Trodd. It might help to explain. What happened, for example, to the child you half-killed at the Turnbulls’?’

  The blank cornflower gaze at her side came slowly to life. The fair brows rose to impossible heights. ‘Kate!’ said Lymond. ‘I know we luxuriate in every kind of melodrama, but I haven’t started making a meal of infants, even Turnbull infants, yet. Who put round that extraordinary story?’