Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [103]
For a long moment, incredulously, he thought that the old man was going to refuse. Then the Marshal nodded, and with a wave of distaste, removed Blyth and the subject from the room. Jerott did not know, as he set off swiftly through the old castle, stopping at post after post, that he was being followed. His whole attention was on discovering the whereabouts of the Calabrians. Within a very few minutes he had satisfied himself that every man of them had gone.
Of all people, these country lads would never make for the Turks. For them there was one hope, revived now for the first time since the glare of the shore guns had ceased: the brigantine. To sail her, more than eight men were needed. Therefore the Châtelet must be involved: some kind of rendezvous between the soldiers in des Roches’s isolated fortress at the end of the spit, and the few men in Tripoli. Somewhere, these men must be waiting with stolen munitions for the signal to join forces; perhaps men from the Châtelet were coming to help carry the powder and guns.… Where would they meet?
In Tripoli, the deserted city, whose walls now offered only token resistance, where there were no women to scream and point, no knights to hinder them. And in Tripoli, he knew exactly where.
To run, in the July night, was to slide through a glutinous coating of sweat, tracking down neck and spine and buttocks. For the sake of nimbleness and silence Jerott wore no mail, but had snatched up a dark jerkin to throw over his chemise; his sword belt and dagger he wore always. Because he had no need to avoid guards and gates and because, when he wanted to, he could move very fast indeed, he reckoned on reaching his destination very soon after the escaping Calabrians and long before de Herrera’s men, grimly exhausting every possible refuge back at the castle.
If he had any doubts, padding through the uneven streets between the darkened houses, with abandoned awnings above broached with stars through their tatters and the rustle of rats and starving dogs in the thick blackness underfoot, he dismissed them. Whoever unlocked the arsenal doors had first killed the guard for the keys, and on that ring, he knew, was the key which had freed Lymond … Lymond, who alone of the garrison had been at pains to cultivate the exiles, who had just publicly championed the helpless. He ran through the empty slave market avoiding the dealers’ empty platforms under the dark arches by memory, and out into the open.
Ahead, the square turret of the Lentulus Arch reared against the wide sky in a glimmer of Corinthian marble; and not far away, he could see the double row of pillars and the wreck of a tower which de Vallier had said had once been a mosque.
Beside it was the building he wanted, its strange big windows shuttered, and no lights to be seen. Slipping from wall to wall, he started to cross to it, blending into the dark, waiting for the sentry who would almost certainly be there. Then he saw him. There was only one, a shadow that had bulk, that breathed heavily against the distant flat popping sounds of desultory fire from the other side of the wall and the hush and hiss of the sea against the rocks outside.
The old tricks were often the best, especially with untried men like these. Jerott, groping, found a pebble at his feet and leaning forward, threw it as far as he could. It fell beyond the dark shadow with a thin chink, and the shadow moved once, and was still.
So was Jerott. Instead of stepping into the starlight as he had expected, his back presented to Jerott’s ready blade, the watcher was still there, facing him.
To move was to be seen. Blyth stayed where he was, the sweat cold on the roots of his hair, the sword-hilt wet in his hand, and after a moment of incomprehension realized that the dim blur ahead of him which was the unknown man’s face was now clearer; that in fact the guard, in conduct very far from that of a Calabrian peasant, was quietly approaching him.