The Disorderly Knights (82 page)

The rain had stopped. In the castle, only two or three lights now remained to beribbon the cobbles. Far off you could hear, under many roofs, the thinning rumble of tired men’s talk.

In the courtyard the silence was absolute. He tried to conjecture how much blood Lymond had lost, between the flogging, the rough handling, the fall. They had been careful to break none of his limbs and he had fallen loosely; he had fainted, Jerott thought, before he touched ground.

Randy would have to care for him: he might not like that. And they would have to guard him from Gabriel. If Graham Malett had wanted him dead before, how must he feel now? They would have to guard him, too, from his men. Except that, by morning, they would want to think of very little but their headaches. They would hardly remember, he hoped, that they had left Lymond here, in the rain.

That had been a good point Adam Blacklock had raised: that old Trotty Luckup’s death should be looked into. He would question Philippa. Better, he would take her to Midculter with him and see Joleta’s two grooms. Philippa was all right. He had sent indoors half a dozen times since it was all over to see how she was. She had fallen asleep, steaming, before the big fire, and someone kindly had replaced her wet cloak with a dry one and had wrapped a rug about her. She had not wakened. He wondered, briefly, in passing why Nicolas de Nicolay had insisted on staying at her side, but decided that Frenchmen were odd, and this one could be trusted.

Walking slowly in the dark, Jerott Blyth thought, at last, of all his stirring hopes when he had rediscovered Francis Crawford in Sicily. And after, at Birgu and Mdina. And then the brilliant, shadowed affinity they had nearly found in the arsenal at Tripoli. And lastly, in watching Lymond fashion this force.

Gabriel had hoped to catch and tame this exceptional spirit. Gabriel instead had been reduced to killing it with his bare hands. Jerott wondered, flatly, if he were a worse Christian than Gabriel, or a less exacting one.

The post was here. He braced himself, putting one scarred hand on
its cross-branch and groping forward with the other for the man chained there in the dark.

His fingers met nothing. He moved closer, running quick hands over the wood, then on the ground, in case by some fantasy the links had broken and the prisoner in his weakness dropped to the earth.

The ground was empty. The whipping-post was vacant. And, when he ran for a lantern and looked, the chains which should have secured Lymond, above and below, were all unbolted, neatly, from their place in the wood, leaving the padlocks intact.

But that was half an hour’s work. No man in the whole of St Mary’s had been alone at the whipping-post for so long since the whole unbearable business began.

Except one. ‘How
conventional
, Jerott!’ Lymond had said, his eyes hilarious, as Jerott had made that pompous speech from the dais. Lymond had passed himself and Joleta on the way. He knew, very likely, what might happen. And he had amused himself, during that half-hour’s wait, while Gabriel, playing disciplinarian for him, had scolded his men, in half-unshackling the chains.

Which meant that, had he wished, he could have escaped the flogging, at will.

But no. Surrounded, he could hardly have fled. But this time it was different. It must have been an odd feeling for Lymond, thought Jerott, to find himself on awakening in the one place from which he knew he could vanish. Or perhaps it was no coincidence at all. There had been some familiar faces, he realized, in that unruly herd.

So Lymond had taken his chance. Wherever he was, whatever he might be doing, Francis Crawford was no longer at St Mary’s.

That was all that Jerott cared about and more, too, than he thought was anyone’s business to know. Abandoning the empty whippingpost, its ingenious chains dangling, to the night air and the stars, Jerott Blyth walked across the bare stones to St Mary’s, and climbed the dark stairs.

XVI
J
erott
C
hooses
H
is
C
ross

(
The Scottish Lowlands, September/October 1552
)

N
EXT
day, in the bright russet sunshine of late morning, Philippa Somerville rode to the haven of Midculter, her nose thick with recent weeping, her eyes red with tears and fatigue. With her went Jerott Blyth and Nicolas de Nicolay, accompanied by no more than their personal staffs.

Behind them they left a chastened St Mary’s. Graham Malett, found that morning collapsed before his worn altar, had been forced to lie open-eyed and silent in bed, and had made no comment when Jerott had explained their purpose in going. He had said nothing about Trotty Luckup. Adam Blacklock had left early that morning on unexplained business and Archie Abernethy and Salablanca had both discreetly vanished when Lymond did.

Visiting Gabriel hesitantly in his room that morning, to broach the subject of Joleta’s burial and the report that must be made of her death, Jerott found that word had already reached him of Francis Crawford’s escape. To what authority might say of Joleta’s death Sir Graham seemed totally indifferent, sunk in a lethargy where no emotions still lived. And it was true, even had it been no accident, he had small need to fear. Whatever their sin, Knights of the Order were judged first by Malta, and not by the common law of their land.

Jerott, rising silently to leave, decided privately to seek Lady Culter’s wise help. For there was no aid for him here; only the acrid smell of distrust and disaffection. Drunk; loose-living; incompetent—Lymond had received a damning indictment, and his ultimate act of self-interest, the preserving of his own precious life at the cost of Joleta’s, had made even the least squeamish draw back.

But, on the other hand, some of Joleta’s tarnish had stuck to her brother. There were some who said that no man of God should have used such unbridled violence first on Francis Crawford and then on the girl; that he had had no right to force on Lymond such a choice. The company was divided, no longer brutally single-minded as it had been before Philippa arrived … as he, in his heart of hearts, was beginning to be divided.

For that reason, perhaps, the silence in which he rode to Midculter was weightier than it need have been, so that his two companions several times exchanged glances; and then Philippa, the little geographer’s gaze encouraging her, said disarmingly, ‘Sir Graham is a very wicked man, isn’t he, to try to put a sword through someone unarmed like that, without even a trial?’

‘Like what? Like Lymond?’ said Jerott irritably, brought back from his own worries. ‘You know what he did to Joleta.’

‘Of course. But we know now he wasn’t the only one, though she made out he was. It was
Joleta
who deserved to be thrashed. And a good deal earlier,’ said Philippa, nervously falling back on an echo of Kate to defend her from the memory of what had actually happened to Joleta.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jerott Blyth shortly. ‘He’s only human, Sir Graham, like the rest of us. You can’t turn and rend in a moment a girl you’ve adored all your life. Lymond should have told Gabriel, somehow, what his sister had become. Instead, he pushed her back in the gutter.’

‘But Sir Graham
knew
what his sister was,’ said Philippa perseveringly. And as Jerott swung round, impatient and scornful, she went doggedly on. ‘He sent her the drugs that brought on her miscarriage. Ask Lord Culter. He told her, once when I was at his home, he hoped she’d thrown away the box her brother had sent her that had brought her seasickness on. Trotty spoke of a box, too. She had been shown it, when Joleta thought she was dying, and recognized what the drug was.’

‘You’re obsessed by the thing,’ said Jerott roundly, but not without kindness. ‘Look, think of something else. Whoever is to blame in the whole bloody mess, it’s not Graham Malett.’

Then they reached Midculter and found that elegant residence in a state of unusual confusion; for someone, on an early errand to the stables, had found half their valuable horses cut loose, and two grooms clubbed to death.

The grooms had been Joleta’s. Impressed into silence by this piece of information, Jerott led his cavalcade with increased urgency from gatehouse to castle, and once inside the door, de Nicolay and Philippa at his back, met and withstood with difficulty the shock of Madame Donati’s onrush. ‘Mistress Joleta? Why have you returned? Is she with Sir Graham safely? Madness! Madness!’ said Evangelista Donati harshly. ‘To travel with the baby so near!’

Behind were the stairs, and at the top of the stairs, her small spine erect, her face firmly controlled, stood Sybilla. Jerott pushed past the agitated Venetian and climbing, came to rest a step or two below Lymond’s mother.

‘I did not think,’ said Sybilla without moving, ‘that you would cross this threshold again?’

‘I am wiser,’ said Jerott, in a subdued voice. He had forgotten to prepare for this interview, coming on the heels, it must seem to her, of the visit he had made in her absence, screaming at Madame Donati and riding, raging, with the weeping Joleta, back to St Mary’s.

‘What do you say?’ said the duenna’s sharp voice at his elbow. ‘Where is Joleta? What has happened?’

‘The stairs,’ said a definite Somerville voice from below them, ‘are no place for emotion. You could get a nasty fall. It’s Philippa, Lady Culter. May we come up?’

And Sybilla, a little spark of humour back in her eyes, said, ‘My goodness, the woman of sense is with us again. Of course. Come up. And M. de Nicolay, isn’t it? We have met at Court. David, wine in the hall, please.…’ And she led the way up.

But before the wine came, Jerott Blyth took his stance by the windows, his thick, Indian-black hair flung back out of his eyes, his beaked, flaring nose jutting into the air, and said uncompromisingly, ‘Joleta is dead.’

Evangelista Donati, her hands folded genteelly in her lap, opened her prim mouth and screamed.

‘How?’ said Lady Culter shortly; and as the screaming went on, drowning Jerott’s reply, she rose, administered a sudden, painful slap on the side of the dariolette’s face, and sat down in the suddenly restored silence. ‘Did she lose the child?’

Jerott found, enraged, that his voice had lost half its power. At the second attempt he said, scrapingly, ‘There was a … struggle at St Mary’s in the courtyard. She … was killed.’

‘
Killed!
’ Sybilla’s voice, unusually high, clashed with Evangelista Donati’s ‘Killed! But who has killed her?’

‘I’m sorry … it was Sir Graham,’ Jerott said, and Sybilla’s hands dropped to her lap.

Into absolute silence, ‘
Killed her? Sir Graham?
But this is the last thing he would do,’ said Joleta’s governess slowly. ‘She is
not
dead! This is a falsehood! A falsehood to frighten me into.…’

She broke off herself, on that rising note, as Nicolas de Nicolay said, ‘It is true, Signora. We had discovered, what you must already know, a little of the poor girl’s sad history. Such was Sir Graham’s horror at his sister’s deception that he drew his sword on her and stabbed her to the heart. She lies there in the chapel, poor child.’ And de Nicolay sighed.

Jerott, staring at him suspiciously, considered this edited version of the girl’s death. It did not mention Lymond. But in Sybilla’s presence that was perhaps as well. Only it gave the impression.…

‘This is true?’ the woman’s harsh voice was pressing. ‘Mr Blyth, this is so? Her brother killed her because of her … past?’

‘Because she had borne a child, and lost another before ever she reached this present sad state,’ said de Nicolay sadly. ‘Young Mr Crawford would have protected her. He opened his arms to her, and she would have gone, because she was greatly afraid.’ His arms fell to his side, his face owlish in its gloom. ‘But it was too late.’

‘
Sia maladetto
,’ said Evangelista Donati in a soft voice, and sat down. ‘Her poor, helpless craving for love became known, so he must discard her, unsullied himself. And he must more than discard her, lest in revenge she let all the world know what this glorious gentleman, this upright monk, this godly Knight of the Order truly is!’ And she rolled her Italian tongue on a word which took even Sybilla by surprise.

Very carefully, Lady Culter settled back in her chair; and Jerott, bewildered, found himself, with Philippa, silently assigned to a seat. ‘Tell us,’ said Sybilla gently, her tone of friendliest interest, ‘what Sir Graham is like?’

*

Afterwards, when Jerott, feeling as if he had shared, for a short time, Francis Crawford’s whipping-post, was standing by the tall windows, looking blindly out; when Madame Donati had gone, her face ugly with weeping, to take her exhausted fury to bed; when Philippa, carried off by a startled Mariotta, had been taken below for some food, Sybilla said, with studied care, ‘But you have said nothing of Francis?’

‘He escaped,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay gently. ‘This was right. He could do nothing further and many are sufficiently roused at St Mary’s to endanger his life. Also, when news of this and of the
Magdalena
reaches the Queen Dowager, she will send to arrest him. That he cannot risk until the case against Sir Graham Malett is complete. You understand?’

‘We understand now,’ said Jerott Blyth bitterly, and turning faced her, his clasped knuckles, in a childish gesture, pressed on his lips. ‘I have been a thick fool.’

‘I know. But there’s such a comfort in numbers, don’t you think,’ said Sybilla, without really thinking. ‘Could you tell me, do you think, just what happened?’

And at the end of that recital, which exhausted him more than he would have admitted and left Sybilla looking like a princess in paper, Nicolas de Nicolay broke his considerate silence again. ‘There is another thing perhaps you should know, since Thompson does, and the rumour of it you may find in every Mediterranean port.’ Uncharacteristically, he halted.