It might have been harmless enough save for one thing. Lying or not, each woman had brought two witnesses. And the accusation against Kerr of Cessford happened to be true, and everyone there knew it to be true, although no one had ever been able to prove it.
It was not surprising then that the clap of laughter which had begun, after the third or fourth notice, to greet every new accusation overreached itself in the case of Sir Walter and fairly frightened the moorhens off the Tweed a hundred yards off. Then it broke off, as a bottle shears at the neck, at the sight of Walter Kerr’s blunt, battle-scarred face as the head of the Cessford Kerrs drew his sword screaming from the sheath and drove it into the ground before the Wardens’ dais.
‘De’il draw ye tae hell. Are ye daft? Is this a March meeting or the ribald outrage of children? The women are bought; the witnesses are plainly lying. The very malicious naming of near every member of mine and Ferniehurst’s family is enough to prove falsehood and malice, and by God, ye won’t seek far to ken whose it is!’ And Cessford’s eyes, seamed with apoplectic blood, veered to the bland, brosy whiskers of Buccleuch.
He finished in silence. As the words rang out, thin in the wide air, Lord Wharton said sharply from his chair, ‘I must pray you, show the respect which this Chair demands. Clearly, the coincidence is not unremarked. The evidence must be sifted and the witnesses reheard. The source of malice, if proved, will be sought. Until then, you will judge as you expect to be judged, on firm evidence only.’
He got Cessford to unearth his sword and withdraw, just a little, while the questioning went on. But the ranks of the Kerrs, of a sudden, had grown remarkably well-knit and grave; and the ranks of the Scotts, glittering with polish, stood trimly as they had throughout. Behind both families, deployed silently on Lymond’s orders at the outset of the case, stood two thirds of the officers and men of St Mary’s, markedly vigilant and, Jerott was sure, not so markedly memorizing names and addresses.
Jerott himself, back to the river with some of his men and facing the Warden’s dais, listened fascinated as Wharton and Drumlanrig, carefully dispassionate, sifted the evidence, to an arpeggio of bawling bastardy. It had been well prepared. While no Kerr, not even Sir Walter, had been caught, it seemed, red-handed, the witness of the wronged maidens could not be proved false either.
There remained the evidence of the children. Running a desperate military eye over the squirming rows of bundles, breeched and breechless, of varying ages and small attraction, he ventured the mild opinion that since every Kerr was either married or promised elsewhere, it was in any case merely a matter of adopting and paying for the children.
‘Those!’ said Cessford in tones of undisguised loathing. And ‘Those!’ repeated Ferniehurst with repulsion vaster still. ‘I’d go to jail first.’
‘You may,’ said the Scottish Warden mildly. ‘They are not, I admit, the flower of their race. But Kerr blood, for all we have been able to prove, may well run in their veins.’
‘Pah!’ said Walter Kerr of Cessford. Ferniehurst, more explicit by temperament, used a number of other words. ‘My lord!’ said Buccleuch, meekly.
The English Warden bent down. ‘Yes, Sir Wat?’
Buccleuch murmured.
Lord Wharton straightened. ‘An excellent idea. My good women, rise and bring your children forward. They are to receive a small gift. Some sweetmeats, to pacify their tempers and reward them for their patience. Pray allow the little ones to accept them.’
A bag of someone’s comfits, hastily pulled from a saddle-bag, was passed to each small illegitimate child, and the crying stopped. The bag, nearly empty, was brought back to Lord Wharton, who took one and passed it to Drumlanrig. ‘You will note,’ he said drily, ‘that every child accepted its sweet in the left hand.’
The uproar after that went on for a very long time, and in its essence consisted of Cessford’s plea, repeated over and over, that without proof no one could force him to take and rear a pack of English bastards as Kerrs. When at last Wharton whacked on the board with his whip, the noise took a full two minutes to die away, and the Cumberland man, all too furiously aware that a monumental joke was under way, was in a foul temper. When he had reasonable silence, he snapped.
‘The Scottish Warden and I have two solutions to offer.’ He glanced at Sir James Drumlanrig, who nodded, and back at the quietly delirious crowd. ‘There is no doubt that these accusations have been gathered from malice against the family Kerr. But we may not conclude from that, that the Kerr family is quite free of blame. In any case, the real sufferers seem likely to be these innocent children.’ Lord Wharton, averting his eyes from the innocent children, glared at Buccleuch, who grinned back.
‘Therefore we suggest either that the whole sanctions are continued to another March meeting, when more evidence may be forward and the matter may be argued again.…
‘That’s continuing the case until the next meeting sub spe concordiœ, in the hope that the parties may agree,’ Fergie Hoddim was saying. ‘An English love-day, they call it.’ And gazed surprised as Lancelot Plummer at his side suddenly choked, and had to be thumped on the back to stop his coughing.
‘—an English love-day,’ continued Lord Wharton, less innocent than Fergie, glaring round him. ‘That is one solution. The other has been put forward by Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch. Since these poor women are incapable of rearing their offspring, and some of the best blood in Scotland may consequently (his phrase) weaken and waste, Sir Wat suggests that, failing support by their own putative fathers, he and his family will gratuitously, and for no payment other than his reward in Heaven, take these little children and rear them at Branxholm to bear proudly the name of Kerr.’
‘Over my deid wambles!’ yelled Cessford.
Wharton’s face was set like brown wood. ‘You object to Buccleuch’s paying for these children?’
‘He can pey for what he likes.… I see ye, ye canty de’il … but he’ll not call yon bunch of louse-ridden, snotty-nosed hedge-gets by the proud name o’ Kerr!’
Sir James Douglas’s cool gaze swept the old man. ‘Dinna be hasty,’ he advised. ‘Consider. Sir Walter is doing the State and ourselves quite a service. It’ll be no cheap matter, laying out money for yon flock, Kerrs or no. If he supplies the siller, he can fairly call the tune.’
‘Then I’ll have the love-day,’ said Cessford forebodingly, after a brief talk with his ally of Ferniehurst. Lord Wharton looked narrowly at the two.
‘In order to terrorize the ladies or the Scotts? If that is your purpose, you will be disappointed, gentlemen. At Sir Walter’s suggestion, we are asking Mr Francis Crawford to come lawburrows that the petitioners and their friends will be unharmed. That is, Mr Crawford becomes your pledge that no illegal violence takes place, either to these women or their witnesses, before the next March meeting takes place. If the lawburrows are broken, Mr Crawford pays the necessary fine but is also, of course, entitled to obtain restitution from you. Mr Crawford, I take it that you are willing to do this?’
From across the flattened turf, Jerott saw Lymond’s head move, affirming, but could not hear what he said.
‘Well?’ said Lord Wharton of the Kerrs.
Sir Walter Kerr of Cessford turned back from where he had been conferring in low tones with Sir John Kerr of Ferniehurst. Stiffly and without glancing at any person save his lordship on the dais, Cessford said, ‘We have decided, my lord. We shall be responsible for the maintenance and upbringing of all these children. But we do not intend that they shall be known by the name of Kerr.’
Barely had he spoken when from the Scott side of the dais a cheer rose that sent the sentries at Wark castle to their arms. As the cheer broke down into resounding laughter and set off, down the field, a concatenation of comment and shouts, ‘I think your conclusion is quite praiseworthy, under the circumstances,’ said Lord Wharton, glaring around. ‘The only proviso, to my mind, is that the mothers themselves must agree. The children are not to be named Kerr.’
The
mothers, with difficulty hiding a certain jubilation, agreed. Before the approving face of Buccleuch, with his wife Janet hanging speechless on his arm, fourteen under-nourished, ill-avised children wavered, or were carried, from the litigants’ smeared benches to the orderly ranks of the Kerrs, which opened yawningly to receive them, and then shut like a trap.
Weeping with laughter on Jerott’s shoulder, Fergie Hoddim won through to speech at last. ‘Suborning witnesses! Tracing cary-handit weans! Wat Scott of Buccleuch must have spent a fortune … a fortune, man, to do it, but was it worth it! Nae provocation offered. All a matter of good honest law, with Buccleuch’s name nowhere mentioned, and the Kerrs helpless … helpless! And the cream o’ the joke.…’ Fergie, to whom love-days were serious business, saw the funny side of this. ‘The cream of the matter—Lymond, who fairly maddened Sir Wat by appointing himself Buccleuch’s watchdog, has got the job of keeping the peace between the Kerrs and all the women Buccleuch bribed … including Sue Bligh of Bamburgh!’
The meeting was beginning to disperse. The Kerrs, encircled by a solid wall of St Mary’s men, were moving one way, the Scotts another. ‘It was Buccleuch’s day, all right,’ said Jerott. ‘While we all stood around in fancy armour like fools, waiting for mayhem, Sir Wat was baiting the Kerrs with impunity, and forcing St Mary’s to protect him for it. I’d have given a good deal to have seen our efficient commander’s face when the truth dawned.’
‘Lymond? I saw it,’ said Fergie. ‘He had Gabriel on the one side of him and me on the other the whole time.’
‘What did he do?’ asked Jerott.
‘Curled up on the neck of his horse and laughed himself silly,’ said Fergie. ‘Yon’s no way to go on.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Jerott Blyth, ‘rather shrewdly endearing, don’t you think?’
*
It had in fact been an unfortunate luxury, that fit of irresistible laughter, and its after-effects were appalling. Sitting up, howling faintly still at Buccleuch’s exquisite effrontery, Francis Crawford found that Gabriel had gone from his side.
Save for one quick half-circuit of the field in the opposite direction, Lymond had kept Sir Graham Malett beside him most of the day. He had noted, without comment, the distant interlude between Scott of Buccleuch and Graham Malett, and had perhaps read something of warning in Adam Blacklock’s passing stare. In any case, missing him now, he looked for Graham Malett in one place only and found him instantly, on foot, his armour glittering, his helmet off, disclosing the splendidly-set head to the sun.
As the crowds waned chattering about them and the company of St Mary’s, long since precisely briefed on its duties, split and muffled, with orderly calm, the smallest outbreak of dissension along the diverse homeward paths, Lymond sent his horse sharply trotting, after the briefest possible of farewells to the Wardens, along the boggy dip to where Graham Malett stood deep in conversation with Richard Crawford, his brother.
Lord Culter, standing reins in hand before the ordered bustle of his following, ready to mount and ride home, saw Francis approaching. He saw him, but although his colour became very high and his cold eyes colder yet, he did not interrupt the soft violence of Gabriel’s tirade. Unseeing, his back squarely to the coming horseman, Graham Malett was saying over and over, his hands gripping Culter’s leather sleeves, ‘What can it count, some trifling misdemeanour, against kinship such as yours? Is it worth the misery on your mother’s face, whatever it is? If it has meaning, surely Christianity means forgiveness?’ He paused, and added, ‘I have no brother, to my sorrow. But I have a sister, dearer to me than my soul, who is mischievous as well as wholesome, like the child that she is.… If the mischievous child grieves me, do you think I forget the loving spirit that lies behind? I forgive her before she troubles me, comfort her when she wrongs me; for she is my sister, and there is no act she could commit in this world which would estrange me from her.’
‘You have great confidence in each other,’ said Lord Culter quietly. Only those who knew him well might have guessed at the incredulous anger behind the flat tone: anger that, being committed to immoral silence, he should now be expected to maintain it in public before the well-meaning onslaught of the very man his brother had wronged.… And here was Francis, cheapening the impossibly cheap by coming to invigilate him.
‘I have confidence in Joleta,’ said Sir Graham, smiling, ‘but not necessarily in the whole of womankind. She is fallible to the small sins of the flesh. And God has given her beauty: not an easy gift for a child.… If she had disrupted your home … if your parting from your brother is in any way Joleta’s fault, I beg you to tell me? Indeed, I shall ask her myself.… I shall insist on an answer.’
‘Well, is it Joleta’s fault, brother?’ said Lymond’s lazy voice. Still gracefully mounted, he paced into Gabriel’s view and stopped, between the two men. ‘One of these small sins of the flesh, perhaps? Whither are you going, pretty fair maid, with your white face and your yellow hair?’
The long, silken hair of his bay’s mane dropped, lock by golden lock, from his outstretched hand, leaving the fingers poised, elegantly cupped, in mid-air. Then smiling, he dismounted. ‘Tell him, Richard. How jealousy hunted me from your door.’
Unhurried, Gabriel turned his head and studied Lymond’s face. He said calmly, ‘If I hadn’t seen Mariotta, I might have believed it. It isn’t because of any competition for her favours that Joleta looked ill the last time I saw her, and had a face white with crying. I think rather the reverse.’
Francis Crawford cried, ‘She’s in love with Richard!’ and half a dozen people in the vicinity, including Adam Blacklock and Jerott Blyth, lingering uneasily for orders, looked at them. Invention blazed in Lymond’s blue eyes. ‘And contrived some reason for Richard to get rid of me!’
With one swift, unexpected movement, Graham Malett caught and gripped Lymond’s two airy hands. ‘I implore you … don’t mock,’ he said, and there was deep distress in his voice. ‘She loves you.… She is pining for you. Don’t you know it? And she is only a child. You must not be cruel.’
‘Tout animal n’a pas toutes propriétés,’ observed Lymond. ‘Some like it cruel.’ He raised his own hand, encased now in Gabriel’s, and planted a solid salute on the other man’s big, knuckled fingers. ‘Io baccio la sua cortese e valorosa mano—And some like it polite.’ Gabriel removed his hands as if stung. ‘And some think they like it polite, but find they prefer to be handled rough. Tastes differ.… You should find her a husband.’
‘I thought I had,’ said Gabriel, all the life gone out of his voice.
‘But,’ said Lymond, and chanted with gentle derision:
The King of Spain is a foul paynim
And ’lieveth on Mahound;
And pity it were that fayre ladye
Should marry a heathen hound?
‘I have no reservations,’ said Gabriel. He stood, his arms hung rejected at his sides, his back a little bent, automatically, to reduce his splendid height. ‘With God’s help, I have faith enough for all of us.’ He paused, looking directly at Richard, the fine skin seamed faintly with tiredness. ‘Won’t you exert your faith also and take him back? Won’t you let me help you, at least?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lord Culter, his voice like pressed ice. ‘I cannot accept. If you want to know why, ask my brother.’
‘Explanations,’ said Lymond firmly, ‘are a mistake. I am perfectly happy. Si non caste, tamen caute. From me the seed; from Thee the blessing that fertilizes. Grant it, grant it, O Lord!’
No one spoke. Beside him, Jerott heard the hiss of Adam Black-lock’s intaken breath. Gabriel, looking at the speaker, wore for a moment an expression of mild and puzzled distaste. But it was on Lymond’s brother that Jerott’s gaze was fixed. Physical revulsion was printed on Lord Culter’s face: the stamp of an antipathy so coarse and so sudden that he wanted to vomit. Instead, after a moment, Richard Crawford spun on his heel and, lifting himself into the saddle, forced his horse without a word away from the
m and into the press of his men.
Gabriel’s grave tender gaze followed him, and then returned to Lymond’s carefree stare. ‘Forgive me. I have made you angry,’ he said. ‘And that in turn has only made matters worse.’
‘Yes, it has, hasn’t it?’ said Lymond. ‘But then meddling interlopers always do. Do you do this for a hobby, or are you writing a book?’
Gabriel’s voice remained steady. ‘I have apologized. I am as foolish as you would have me look. But I only wished from my heart to help.’
‘I,’ said Lymond coolly, ‘am a philocalist of independent means. I help myself. If you can tear yourself away from my family’s affairs, I fancy there is a little work to be done.… Interested, Blacklock?’
Beside Jerott Blyth, and already as far from the centre of the dispute as the crowd would allow, Adam Blacklock flushed scarlet but said hardily, ‘I have a m-message for Sir Graham. The French Ambassador is here, and would like Sir Graham’s company back to Edinburgh.’
‘Here? At Hadden Stank?’ Lymond’s eyes flickered over the crowd and returned, suddenly inscrutable, to the artist. ‘Then he must be incognito. There is no banner. Are you sure?’
But Blacklock knew, as they all did, the tall, bony person of M. d’Oisel, the French King’s Lieutenant in Scotland and Mary of Guise’s right-hand man, who might well take the occasion, on his way back from the French Court, to slip into a March meeting and make observations thereon. ‘It was M. d’Oisel,’ he said.
Gabriel’s voice was gentle. ‘I saw him, I think. But I could not be sure; you will remember keeping me at your side most of the day.… He is a civilized man. He would enjoy Buccleuch’s little joke with the Kerrs.’ He hesitated. ‘I need not leave with him unless you wish. I have come to know him rather well while pursuing Sandilands’s affairs in Council, that is all.’
‘What, disobey the French Ambassador!’ said Lymond. ‘Let us not tempt Fate with heresies. Go. Go by all means, and let thy mouth be filled with explanations, in French and English, of Buccleuch’s little joke with the Kerrs.’
The Disorderly Knights Page 49
