Later, Lancelot Plummer the architect, precise, fastidious, sarcastic and the best engineer in Europe, was the man who helped Gabriel lovingly erect his portable altar, with Lymond’s less than rhapsodical sanction, and was the first to kneel there. Alec Guthrie, an interested observer, raised his eyebrows above the bowed heads of the knights, of Plummer, of Randy Bell, flushed on his knees, and of Adam Blacklock, lurking hesitantly on the fringe. And even Guthrie’s sharp eyes narrowed when, forsaking Latin, Graham Malett addressed his Maker and his audience simply, in the soft Scots of his home. ‘Thou art my hope, Lord Jehovah; my confidence fra my bairnhood.… Look down on these Thy poor sinners, and grant us Thy grace.…’
Lymond also was there, watching. Jerott, lifting his head, disconcertingly found himself under that cold stare, and saw it move then to Plummer and to Randy Bell, where it rested awhile. Comparing, no doubt, his morals and his piety, thought Jerott bitterly. They would all doubtless find themselves tomorrow with the filthiest assignment in the camp.
They got it sooner than that, although not through any agency of Francis Crawford’s. Before the service was over, a runner had burst in gasping to tell Lymond that the siege engine, the loved object of Plummer’s and Bell’s afternoon work, had outmanoeuvred its blocks and run downhill into Effie Harperfield’s farm, killing a boy in the byre and marooning the widow Harperfield and four children in her own back room.
They were all on their feet in the little chapel. ‘I don’t believe it!’ said Plummer sharply. The tower and drawbridge, of heavy timber, was his personal triumph, and Jerott, who had worked with Bell on the job, knew how painstaking he had been.
By then Lymond was issuing orders, without wasting time on the cause; that would come later. At the same time Gabriel, hand on his arm, said quickly, ‘Francis, will you allow me? De Seurre and Jerott and I have done a lot of this. We’ll have it levered erect before your untrained men could manage.’
This was true. All the men of the Order were familiar with siege work. At St Mary’s their mechanical training had only begun. And six men expert in leverage could save lives quicker than twenty unskilled. Lymond said briefly, ‘Take over. It’s yours.…’ and in a moment, Plummer leading and Lymond and Graham Malett together behind, the members of the Order at St Mary’s were making over the small hills towards the Widow Harperfield’s farm, with the remaining officers, Abernethy, the carpenters and two smiths and their tools, and twelve picked men racing after.
It was a brief ride. As they streamed downhill in a sunlit river of leaves they could see the splintered skeleton of the tower above the thatch and rowan trees of the farm, while the hens flapped and screeched still and Thomas Wishart, who had made the discovery, reposed in an unlikely attitude, half in and half out of the roof, telling long Aberdeen jokes to the four Harperfield children stuck below. The byre was a rickle of stones, with an uneven heap lying beside it, its face veiled by a cloak.
The machine was erected, braced, and wheeled to flat ground inside twenty minutes. The orders came in a clear, steady flow in Gabriel’s magnificent voice, pausing only now and then in deference to Plummer or to Lymond before making more demands on his men. The roof and chimney, properly strengthened, held firm and secure as inch by inch the great tower shifted, its swinging drawbridge safely strapped, its spine braced by iron. And as the hole was gradually cleared, Tosh swung his agile body and dropped, light on his acrobat’s feet, to where the crying children crouched and lifted them to safety one by one, chaffing Effie Harperfield the while about the great new mansion she would be able to get off St Mary’s in restitution.
Then at last, Gabriel was able to stand erect, the sweat running over his skin, and say breathlessly, ‘It’s safe now. Heavens, I’m tired. Francis, you’ll never find a better set of men. I’ve worked them like dogs without even remembering that they’re still on intensive training.… Can I on their behalf beg a break? I know you would intend to give them one soon.… I really doubt if they can go on without one after that.’
‘You look exhausted,’ said Jerott. ‘Francis, he can’t ride on tonight.’
‘Old age,’ said Gabriel. ‘It’s my second adventure in two days, in fact. On my first night at Flaw Valleys the kitchen chimney caught fire and then the room above; and Mistress Somerville, who appears as a rule to be most entertainingly level-headed, became extraordinarily upset at the idea of damage to her precious music room and we had to mobilize the countryside. Which reminds me, Francis. Her daughter Philippa is no friend of yours.’
‘I know,’ said Lymond. With the rest, they were walking to their horses. The Harperfields, with Tosh, had long since been taken to neighbours and the November moon was coming up in the dusk, smoky red and vast as a city.
‘Then you know your own business best,’ said Gabriel mildly. ‘But I ought to tell you that she has some silly plan to shake your dignity. I don’t know what it is and I’m not even supposed to know it’s aimed at you. But my advice would be to give her a chance to forget you. She will, in time.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ said Lymond. ‘You will, of course, stay as long as you wish after your magnificent endeavours, unless the household staff demand a holiday too.’
‘You’re going to declare a rest period?’ asked Jerott. Leisure, with Gabriel there, seemed too good to be true.
‘Rumour being what it is, I imagine it will have declared itself by now,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes. We shall take three days from our labours to relax. Provided Sir Graham understands that by midday tomorrow St Mary’s will be empty and all the men at arms and half the officers whoring in Peebles.’
In the half-dark you could guess at Gabriel’s smile. ‘Do you think I don’t know human nature?’ he said. ‘They are bound by no vows. But as they learn to respect you, they will do as you do.’
‘That’s what we’re all afraid of,’ said Jerott; and there was a ripple of laughter and a flash of amusement, he saw, from Lymond himself. But he had not meant to be as funny as that.
*
The following day, Gabriel left. Before he went, he sought out Francis Crawford and asked him, as a young lance might do, if he might later return to St Mary’s and join his command.
The interview, by Gabriel’s own contrivance, was private; but by some alchemy, on that misty morning, as they buckled on their cuirasses for the day’s work, every officer at St Mary’s knew of it, and speculated on what Lymond would say. And Jerott, for one, promised himself that if Francis Crawford’s response was to humiliate Gabriel, he, Jerott, would walk out forthwith.
For what else remained for Graham Malett to do? His self-appointed task in Europe was done: Malta was a closed door. From the Knight of St John who had brought the Queen Dowager from France, Jerott already knew that the French Ambassador to Turkey had been vindicated by the efforts in Malta of de Villegagnon, though they had learned from Gabriel that a bitter struggle went on still for the life of the Marshal de Vallier, who had been thrown, a sick man, into the rock dungeon of St Angelo, and whose ‘confession’ under torture to treachery had been sent off to France. Rumours of bribery, of false trials and serpentine deceit by the Grand Master de Homedès were almost certainly true.
So without resources of money and land, his own Scottish birthplace destroyed, and too proud to hire his sword, as de Villegagnon and the Strozzis had done, to a foreign command, Graham Malett had come to his homeland. Torphichen Priory, for more than four hundred years the Order’s centre in Scotland, would give him shelter but he could not strain Sandilands’ kindness too far. As it was, were it known Sir James was on friendly terms with a knight called to justice, he would not remain Preceptor of Torphichen for long.
As they dressed, Fergie Hoddim and Tait and Blacklock speculated fiercely on Gabriel’s reasons for selling his services to an obscure, half-trained corps such as St Mary’s. And when presently they moved chatting into the hall and found there Sir Graham Malett, one booted foot on the hearth, waiting in idle talk with Lymond for a chance to depart, the
y paused, each trying without being obvious to read two unreadable faces.
Then Gabriel, his guinea-gold hair blazing in the firelight, looked smiling at Lymond, and Francis Crawford said pleasantly, ‘Who’s holding the wagers? Fergie? Then note, Fergie, that we are to be joined presently here at St Mary’s by that well-known servant of Christ’s poor, Sir Graham Malett. As the saying has it, if the Gods have woolly feet, they also have arms of iron. Sir Graham is one of the most ironic. I am delighted that he is coming and I wish only to point out that the Order is not taking over this army, nor is this army taking over the Order. It is merely, as always, following my command.’
There was a small silence.
‘There is, I think,’ said Gabriel, in his rich, gentle voice, ‘nothing that any of us would ask better to do.’
*
‘Why?’ said Adam Blacklock later, when for the first time he and Guthrie were thrown together alone. ‘Why the hell did he do it?’
‘Do what?’ said the philosopher without excitement. ‘Throw down the gauntlet to the St John’s men? He had to make his position clear, or they’d feel in conscience bound to convert or crusade or otherwise reserve their armchair in heaven. Why take Gabriel at all? He had to, my minikin fiddler with chalks; he had to, or he would have lost all his best men including Jerott Blyth who one day is going to be nearly as good as himself. Don’t worry,’ said Alec Guthrie comfortably. ‘Don’t worry. Of all men Graham Malett knows how to exercise patience and tact.’
‘Of c-course,’ said Adam Blacklock gloomily. ‘But does Lymond?’
*
The last comment was made by Lord Culter when, riding to St Mary’s in the first winter frost, he haled his brother swearing from the tiltground to entertain him before the fire. Sitting down, ‘I don’t care a damn,’ said Richard Crawford calmly, ‘if it’s three o’clock and you’ve only got another bloody hour of daylight. You don’t need the practice and the ground’s like iron. You can lower their dignity some other way. What’s the rush anyway? You can’t fight anywhere till the spring.’
‘We shan’t be ready till the spring,’ said Lymond grimly. He picked up the helmet he had hurled down on entering and gave it to his steward, who unasked had brought in mulled wine; then sat opposite his brother and running a metal-blackened hand through his hair said in a different tone, ‘What a hell of a welcome. I’m sorry. But there’s so much still to do outside before the weather closes, and we have to tackle all the dreary minutiæ on weapons and theory where all your knightly warriors start losing their tempers and you have to go through a deadly routine of light relief with competitions and war jokes and community singing, and long, long stories of rape and battle and Generals I have Known.’
‘You’re lying in your teeth,’ said Richard cheerfully. ‘You’ve hand-picked that little band of sophisticates, and you know it. Gabriel alone is pretty well worth paying to hear. Has he been back?’
‘Twice. He had Joleta to see, and Sandilands has got him a house in Edinburgh, in one of the Order’s tenements. He’ll soon be able to spend most of his time at St Mary’s.’
‘I’m glad.’ After a moment, as Lymond said nothing, Richard added, ‘So is your doting mother. You certainly won’t have noticed, but he is what you have always needed: your perfect complement at last. You may match up to this man, Francis, but you’ll have to stretch yourself for the first time to do it.’
‘Too late. You find me on the recoil,’ said Lymond briefly. ‘How’s Mariotta?’
‘Don’t be a fool.’ Richard wasn’t to be put off. ‘For God’s sake, Francis, don’t throw this chance away. Meet him halfway at least. He had Joleta in tears over having quarrelled with you, and he worships her and she him.… Incidentally, my friend, what was that disagreement about? Lady Jenny said the furniture was matchwood, and Joleta wouldn’t explain.’
‘She needed a lesson,’ said Lymond shortly. ‘So do you. I changed the subject a moment ago because if one more person thrusts the Archangel Graham Malett down my throat I shall vomit.’
‘I daresay,’ said Richard Crawford in the mildest tone he possessed. ‘After all, he is the first master you have ever had.’
And was silent, abashed, as Lymond, his eyes wild with anger, rose to his feet like a cat and twitching the glass from his brother’s lax hand, tossed wine and vessel into the fire.
‘Drink to it, you and he,’ he said.
*
In March, on her bed beside the spilling fountain in the corsair Dragut’s beautiful seraglio, where the filigreed walls with their prayers to Allâh opened on the sunlit aviaries and the parks beyond, watered with cisterns and planted with pine and cypress and weeping willow and the blazing flowers of Africa, Oonagh O’Dwyer gave birth to her son.
Patience was something her Irish soul would never learn. But through the eternity of that winter, destitute in luxury, solitary amid hundreds, she clung to one thing. This was by her own will. Her own decision that she had cast off Cormac O’Connor, the debased son of kings, whose hectoring, black-visaged face she would see again in her child and his. Her own assent had freed Francis Crawford to return to Europe and his own arrogant destiny.
Dragut, old and princely corsair, had troubled her little and she had learned to respect him, and after Galatian, the pathetic weakling, to find no hurt to her pride in serving him. She had soon found that he was little in the palace, wintering near the Sultan and putting to sea at the first sign of fighting weather. In the seraglio she slept in silk and had pages and slaves black and white to fill every wish; and occasionally Güzel would come, whom she had never seen unveiled: Güzel the jewel of Dragut’s old age, who alone went with him to Djerba, to Constantinople, to the winter palace at Aleppo; who spoke English and wherever she moved, in little clouds of serving boys, with her women, her slaves, her poets and singers, her artists and guards, her musicians and dancers, was surrounded, always, by laughter.
It was Güzel the anonymous, with her fleeting, uninformative visits, who had kept Oonagh’s tough pride alive; prevented her from hammering the foul feet in her belly which thrust jumping through her tender skin day and night; the great skull and round buttocks and tight fists that squeezed and pressed the mills of her life into whining disorder; the interloper who deprived her of rest, of thought and of all delicate things.
Then, as the fretting crystals over her bed stirred in the first breeze of March, she felt her burden eased. She ate, and walked, and planned for when the swollen by-blow would be gone, and her mind and body her own. When the welcome, murmuring ache began she was inspired, relieved, exhilarated, and bore it in triumph until dusk. But when the gentle, timeous aches became elastic agony, and her monstrous young raped mind and spirit from her again, she wrestled alone in the dark under her silken sheets until, at the moment when suddenly she was afraid to be solitary, Güzel’s voice said in Arabic, ‘Now!’
And the room sprang into blazing light; and the commotion of many voices, the hiss of steam, the chink of china and silver, the grip of kind hands and the tone of friendly cheer, encouragement and delight suddenly warmed and melted her cold heart.
Time, excited, agonizing, magnificent time flew, to the lilt of Güzel’s voice. The frenzy mounted, mounted and exploded in a vast, irresistible burgeoning. From between Güzel’s ringless, capable hands came a string of brief, mellow cries; silence, and then a small, clear renewal of complaint, and two feet, blue-mottled morsels of flesh, kicked lost in the limitless air.
Oonagh’s child had been born. It was a son, small-boned and perfect, with skin as white as new milk within a day of its coming, and hair downy gold as a chick’s. It could not, in a thousand miraculous nights, have been begotten by Cormac O’Connor.
‘May God grant thee prosperity,’ wrote Dragut Rais to Sir Graham Malett in Scotland, fingering the smile in his grizzled beard as he paced up and down in front of his scribe. ‘He that fulfils his oath is thrice blessed. The woman from Ireland, on being brought to birth of her child, has through th
e goodness of Allâh been granted a fair son with hair gold as corn.
‘His breeding being therefore ignoble, I offer the child to thyself for the paltry sum of a thousand écus. Less I could not take for the trouble we have had to safeguard his life, his mother wishing him dead. Should misfortune divide thee from thy purchase, we shall permit her to kill him, since only Alläh knows in whose tent he was engendered. The woman I sell.’
The reply came when the baby was seven weeks old, naked in its basket of cotton, with new-grown golden lashes round newly-smiling blue eyes. The packet enclosed ten thousand écus. ‘Keep the woman and treat her well,’ the message enjoined, ‘with this money for her well-being and as the price of the child. Rear the boy, I beg you, by the God we each serve, until I may come for him, or make further petition; and may the Most High reward you.…’
And firmly and clearly, Graham Malett had signed.
VI
The Hand on the Axe
(St Mary’s, 1551/2)
CAREFULLY as a Hospitaller nursing his sick, Gabriel said no word to Francis Crawford of the birth of the child called Khaireddin; nor did he take any steps to send word to Cormac O’Connor, although he knew where he was. The only person he told, because he was closer to her than to any other alive, was his sister Joleta, as she sat brushing the brilliant hair back from her flushed skin, snatching periodically as tantalizingly he held her long ribbons just out of reach.
‘Brute! Give me them! So he still thinks the woman died at Tripoli?’ said Joleta, who as Lymond had found was not easily shocked.
‘Yes. And it is better that he should. There is work for him here that matters much more. In any case, I believe the attachment was only a chance one: he did not look to me passionately involved. He could be, so easily, and with the wrong person. I wish you were on better terms with him, Joleta.’
The Disorderly Knights Page 37