‘But I,’ said Francis Crawford gently, ‘am not of your Order.’
And Piero Strozzi, a man of humour and of no ties with the Order of St John, concealed his amusement and sat in a mood of silent anticipation. For this artistic performer clearly understood every nuance of his invitation to dine with the Constable, and for the Constable, unused to ambush in the bogs of statesmanship, the auspices were bad.
So, as every man there realized, with the possible exception of young Lorraine, was his dilemma. For the de Guise family, whose eldest sister Mary was Queen Dowager of Scotland, was becoming also too powerful in France. And with the coming marriage of the child Mary of Scotland to the Dauphin of France, the de Guises would be supreme behind the joint thrones of Scotland and France.
To curb the Queen Dowager’s power in Scotland were only a few strong Scottish families, dissatisfied with their French pensions, or with leanings towards the new religion and England. But these were hardly enough to keep her in check, so happily were they squabbling among themselves. And if Mary of Guise returned to Scotland with a new leader, a man of talent and panache, who would help her keep Scotland and maybe take Ireland too for the King of France, the power of her family would be beyond any control.
Similarly, if the King of France, so indebted to Crawford of Lymond for his services to the child Mary, chose with the de Guise family to make of Lymond an ally and a popular idol, the power of the Constable and the French Queen, silent in the daily company of her husband’s mistress, silent on the subject of the pregnant Lady Fleming, would silently drain away.
And meanwhile—‘As you have observed,’ said the Constable at last to Lymond as the marzipan was cleared away and the rosewater brought, ‘there are three Knights of Malta in this room. It is no coincidence. The Grand Prior and I have summoned M. de Villegagnon and M. Strozzi for the gravest of reasons.’
He paused. The Constable’s grand-uncle, as no one present ever forgot, had been first Grand Master of the Order of St John in Malta. It was one of the most useful relationships the Constable possessed, in an age where nepotism was not only legitimate but compulsory. Thoughtfully drying his hands on the towel proffered, ‘I cannot imagine why,’ said Lymond, and laid the silk down. ‘Unless the Sultan Suleiman is sending a corsair fleet against France?’
Piero Strozzi, commander and engineer, who had enjoyed every moment of his meal, caught the yellow-haired gentleman’s wide stare and grinned. ‘A little too disingenuous, sir,’ said the Florentine, and ignoring the Constable’s silence, continued comfortably.
‘Of course, France has been an ally of Turkey for years. We are not supporting the Moslem faith any more than Suleiman is supporting ours. But in face of the Emperor Charles V, dear small man who is enemy to us both, an alliance, military and naval, does exist. Added to that—’ Strozzi’s dark eyes strayed from the sardonic face of his brother to de Villegagnon’s steadfast stare, and from there to the Grand Prior’s flushed face. ‘Added to that is the fact that Malta and Gozo were the Emperor Charles’s gifts to the Order, which would be homeless without them. The Knights of St John have lived rent-free on Malta for twenty-one years on condition that they defend it from the Turks, together with its neighbour Gozo, and Tripoli, over on the African coast. So that those gentlemen of France who have taken the holy vows of the Order have on occasion the unpleasant task of deciding whether to fight for the Order in the interests of the Emperor against the Turk … or whether to defend France from the Emperor, despite the fact that France’s allies are the very Moslems they are sworn to exterminate.… Am I right?’ said Piero Strozzi, smiling, to de Villegagnon.
The Chevalier did not return the smile. He said stiffly to Francis Crawford, ‘The Grand Prior has already made the position clear. To all Knights in the Order, whatever their nationality, allegiance to their Faith and the Order comes first.’
It was then that the knotted fist of Constable Anne de Montmorency fell; that the table rattled, chiming with abandoned silver, and the linen sprang grey with rosewater stains. Thick-built and grizzled; older than any man present, the Constable of France reared to his feet and stared at them all, jewelled and negligent round the small table in the leather-dressed room. ‘Is it a time for toying with words?’ he exclaimed. ‘For parlour phrases and pettishness? Have ye forgotten?’
‘I have not forgotten,’ said Francis of Lorraine passionately, jumping up. Striding to where Lymond was seated he put his two hands white-wristed on the table and bent, the pale hair under the velvet bonnet falling flat over his flushed brow. ‘If you are a man of no principle, leave us. If you are a man of no faith, abandon us. If you revere the infidel, go to him. But listen to this. The Turkish fleet is at sea. A hundred and twelve royal galleys, two galleasses, thirty flutes and more brigantines and troop ships under Sinan Pasha with Dragut, Salah Rais and twelve thousand men have left Constantinople and are sailing for Malta. The Chevalier de Villegagnon is leaving tonight for the island to warn the Grand Master. Signor Strozzi remains until there is a general call to arms, in case of attack by the Emperor on France. We wish to ask you, as a soldier and a man versed in ships, who has no national bias to affect his judgement and standing, to go with M. de Villegagnon and stir the Grand Master to Malta’s defence.’
‘Against,’ said Lymond drily, ‘Allâh’s Deputy on Earth?’
The boy straightened. ‘I have told you …’ he began.
‘Your allegiance is to God. I know,’ said Lymond. ‘But God knows the Sultan is going to be a little peevish when he notices that French knights are killing his Janissaries, whether in the Order or not. If I were twenty Scotsmen you might hide your perfidious political faces behind me, but I cannot see that you may hide behind one.’
‘But you—’ began the Constable, a little tardily.
‘—are the equal of twenty. I believe it. But would your Treasurer believe it?’ said Francis Crawford amiably.
There was a crisp silence. However couched, the demand was extortionate. It was contemptible. De Villegagnon frowned; Leone Strozzi smiled; and the Constable’s face reddened with feeling even while he slowly agreed, as agree he must. Only Piero Strozzi looked thoughtfully at the speaker, knowing that Francis Crawford was wealthy enough to need no bribing, and sophisticated enough to find this kind of exercise mortally dull.
What he did not know was that the same Francis Crawford had found out only that morning that an Irishwoman called Oonagh O’Dwyer had just taken ship at Marseilles for the island of Gozo. And that if Francis Crawford reached Malta, it was because he always meant to reach Malta; not to fight, but to recruit.
In any case, it made no odds to the Order. The Order had got what it wanted; would have got what it wanted even had Lymond spurned them all and returned home to Scotland … since it was for no disingenuous reason that M. de Villegagnon, Chevalier of St John, had placed on Lord Culter’s anxious shoulders the responsibility for Gabriel’s sister of the apricot hair.
*
With de Villegagnon and his suite, Lymond left that night for Marseilles. Before he went he did some brief leave-taking: of the King, of his friends and followers at court, of the Queen Dowager and Margaret Erskine, Tom’s bride.
These last he got over quickly. Margaret, sober daughter of Jenny Fleming and herself a good friend in need, was pleased, he thought, even without understanding his motives. The Queen Dowager was angry.
‘And what do I tell my child?’ asked Mary of Guise. ‘That you are now compelled to seek excitement and fortune among her enemies?’
‘I do not expect,’ said Lymond, ‘to be fighting quite under the banner of the Emperor Charles. And if I were, I could hope surely for nothing better than to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Grand Prior of France.’
It was a nasty hit which, being Lymond, he did not particularly regret, even though he was fairly sure that the unworldly Francis of Lorraine would soon be sadder, wiser and several thicknesses of skin poorer under the lashing tongues of his brothers and sisters de
Guise.
*
At Marseilles, imperial blue upon blue under cobalt blue skies, the Mediterranean lay fresco-still. The docks steamed with the smells and brown flesh of seamen and slaves; the rigging of brigantines, galley and galleass meshed the merciless sun. A galley had been found, with convict rowers and free sailors, little better; its master bought for the double voyage to Sicily, where de Villegagnon meant to take his first warning to the Sicilian Viceroy, Charles V’s representative nearest Malta, sworn to help the Order in time of need. The knights might not go so far as to help the enemies of France, but it seemed that they were quite ready to call on France’s adversaries to help them.
Before leaving, there was one visit to pay. De Villegagnon, with Lymond beside him, waited among the stream of traders, bankers and businessmen calling to see M. de Luetz, Baron d’Aramon, his Grace the King of France’s Ambassador to Turkey, about to return to his post at Constantinople bearing, it was rumoured, four, six, eight, ten muleloads of gold to present to the Most Christian King’s ally, Sultan Suleiman.
Rising to greet the monolithic bulk of the Chevalier, d’Aramon smiled his automatic, worn smile. Faded by the Levantine sun, he had watched his fresh young tenets, his forceful loyalties, his vigorous faith, bleach and shrivel with heat and distance until his homeland France seemed to him simple, noisy, bright as a toy. Despite the Court intrigue which lost him his lands to the King’s mistress Diane, the Baron d’Aramon strove to do his best for France; but it was not the France of the missal and the anointed Christian King. It was merely an ambitious, quarrelsome country whose needs, unless tempered, could bring misery to herself and to others. In all the world, after all, there were only four nations who mattered: France, with Scotland dragged at her heels; Charles V, head of the Holy Roman Empire, with Spain, Flanders, parts of Italy and Germany; and the Pope in his pocket; England with Ireland under her thumb; and the Sultan, who possessed Turkey, Hungary, Egypt already, and who wished to conquer the world.
There were times when M. d’Aramon believed that life would be easier if he did, since he had verified what no man in France would dare to confirm: that the Sultan of the Ottomans was a good deal more humane than any Christian prince he had discovered.
Therefore M. d’Aramon, French Ambassador to Turkey, was apprehensive when one of the foremost French knights of the Order called on him, and fatalistic when de Villegagnon told him of the expected attack. But all he said was, ‘Is Malta prepared?’
To which the Chevalier de Villegagnon replied with an explicit and no doubt sacred oath. ‘With the Spanish Grand Master we have? De Homedès has done nothing. In fifteen years, Malta and Gozo and Tripoli are as poorly fortified as when the knights first received them. Any fool,’ said de Villegagnon bitterly, ‘could see danger was coming. Didn’t the Order help the Emperor last year every time Charles asked politely for the Order’s galleys? The Emperor’s Admiral cleared the Moors from half the African coast with the Order’s help and chased Dragut temporarily off the seas; and it wasn’t because Charles was over-concerned about the free spread of the One True Faith either. It was because Dragut was becoming a little too busy attacking Spanish-owned Sicily and Calabria, and he wanted to teach him a lesson. And now the Order will suffer.’
‘And where is Spain’s High Admiral?’ asked Lymond. ‘Still at sea?’
Brought down from his high dudgeon the big man hesitated, and then grudgingly smiled. ‘Aye. After Dragut made a fool of him at sea in the spring, the Prince Doria found himself too desperately busy ferrying relatives of the Emperor back and forth to Spain to be able to fight.’ The smile went. ‘And so, since Sicily was unprotected, Charles got the Grand Master to send the Order’s galleys under Pied-de-Fer to Messina to stand by. They’re there yet.’
‘To return, of course, if Malta is attacked … backwards, if necessary,’ said Lymond. ‘Your one-eyed Grand Master must be a man of some character if he has your colleagues’ support for all this?’
‘He has a circle of Spanish knights like himself, more Imperialist than the Emperor,’ said de Villegagnon curtly. ‘With them, he can persuade the Supreme Council to vote as he wants. And he wants to obey the Pope and the Emperor and, if possible, to avoid accounting for any money he has spent in the last fifteen years. The real reason why he won’t fortify and won’t call in his knights is that the Treasury is empty. The Order has no money to keep it alive.’
‘Dear me,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘I am being taken to an unfortified island, where half the defenders and most of the defence fleet are missing, to lay down my life in defence of an Order incompetently if not culpably led, wholly divided among itself, given over to fighting for secular princes and entirely denuded of money with which to pay me for my services. Where are Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude and Justice? Where are the Eight Beatitudes of that proud White Cross? Where are the Crusaders of yesteryear, chaste and highborn, dying in virginal joy for their vows? They sound,’ said Francis Crawford abstractedly, ‘just like the Kerrs.’
‘You are forgetting Gabriel,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon, and with a quick smile acknowledged that this was d’Aramon’s own given name. ‘Reid Malett—de la Valette—Romegas—the skeleton of the Order as it should be is in Malta still. Only there are not enough of us—yet.’
‘And once you have been decimated by Dragut, there’ll be none of you at all. Why not let Tripoli go?’ said Lymond.
‘Because the Order holds Malta by virtue of her readiness to defend Tripoli,’ said the Baron d’Aramon. ‘To give up Tripoli would displease the Emperor indeed. Do I gather,’ he said, studying Francis Crawford, ‘that the Constable of France has promised you a sum of money in exchange for your services in this war?’
‘He has promised me a sum of money, clearly illusory, for my services, it seems, against the Grand Master,’ said Lymond equably. ‘He is also hoping, unofficially no doubt, to convey to your Excellency that any gifts of gold about to be dispatched from the King of France to Turkey would be better delayed.’
Over the pale brown, fatless skin of the Ambassador a tired smile appeared. ‘Gentlemen, I am already late in embarking,’ he said. ‘And I may not even reach Turkey before the sailing season ends. But I know Dragut well. If what you fear comes to pass … and if I am in the vicinity, you can count on my help, at least to parley.’
‘Should anyone, of course, pause to parley,’ Francis Crawford pointed out.
*
Over the windless, hyacinthine sea, the galley Sainte-Merveille carried Lymond and de Villegagnon to Messina, the buzz and hiss of sheared foam on her beams. From the baked, frenetic shipyards of France, the white harbours of Ibiza and Minorca, the tawny shores of the African states, no corsair prince stirred from his palace; no lurking brigand hovered, hull down for a spice ship; no royal or imperial sea fortress set out to frighten the unwanted from the main shipping lane of the world. When the sea-wolves of Islâm were hunting, the small boats stayed on the beach.
Except one which nothing, not even Dragut, could deter; and assuredly not de Villegagnon’s modest galley, leaving Marseilles on a breathless day under oar, on roughly the publicized date when the Baron d’Aramon, French Ambassador to Turkey, was due to embark with his four, six, eight or ten muleloads of gold.
The Sainte-Merveille met her fate long after the French coast had sunk in the milky haze of midsummer heat, far to port. It looked peaceful enough: a fishing boat lying ahead, tilting on the greasy slopes of the swell, the bright caps of the fisherfolk swinging, doubled, in the sea and the vaporous air; their voices, deadened with space, rehearsing a chant.
Lymond, who on leaving Marseilles had found a solitary spot of shade on the rambade and was occupying it, his eyes shut in thought, opened them suddenly and rose. The fishing boat, rowed in a desultory way, was making slowly towards them. Then, under his eyes, the bright, capped heads slid in unison as the rowers produced a sudden strong stroke, then another. Oars flashing, the tub shot forward into the bigger ship’s path. At
the same moment, incredibly, from her broad painted sides there slid the long black muzzles of cannon, and a voice from her poop shouted, ‘Stop!’
The command, in French, was heard by everyone on the Sainte-Merveille, including de Villegagnon who, running down the rambade, flung himself, an arquebus weighting each hand, on the deck where Lymond still stood.
From the rogue ship the command was repeated. ‘Stop! Or we fire!’
The Sainte-Merveille had neither cannon nor soldiers. The Sainte-Merveille had over two hundred chained slaves, a handful of nervous seamen, a number of conciliatory officers, including the Master, and M. de Villegagnon’s party of six, including Lymond. There was also an assortment of bows, crossbows and arquebuses, which every ship in these waters carried, and which de Villegagnon’s men were hurling on deck as fast as they could.
‘We are within their range already,’ said the Chevalier, peering lengthwise through the iron pins of the prow rail. ‘If we veer or pass we shall simply make an even better target for those guns. I have issued orders that we run her down. If they let off their guns at close quarters, they’ll suffer almost as much as we shall.’
‘I don’t fancy,’ said Lymond, clearing his throat suddenly, ‘that they’ll fire at close quarters, or even at long range, for that matter. When they get broadside on, they’ll trust to their hackbuts.’
‘All right,’ said de Villegagnon abruptly. ‘We have the choice of flying and outstripping their aim, and shooting it out with hand weapons. I’d rather shoot.’
The Disorderly Knights Page 7