Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [117]
United in dazzling peace, they heard the sick man’s voice at length trail unanswered into sleep. And presently the man at her side moved, murmured some half-ironic tenderness against her lips and was gone, the air stirring freely once more on her skin. For a long time afterwards she lay blankly content, thinking vaguely of the future, and Graham Malett’s voice, long ago, saying ‘sacrifice … sacrifice.…’ It sounded thin and monk-like and even pathetic to her complacent flesh, which could make an animal, if it chose, from laughter itself.
*
In later, soberer weeks, when bitterly she began to wonder if ever she had had the means to attract, she was to wonder if in that brief passage Lymond had hoped for oblivion, as she had once received it from him. For that afternoon de Seurre, a Knight of the Order and d’Aramon’s other captain, walking like a drunk man through the joyous clamour of the alien camp, had brought them the news that the white flag was flying from Tripoli. Galatian, she remembered, had laughed. And Graham Malett, without a word, had risen and walked out of the tent.
Shortly after that, the guns stopped and they learned that two of Sinan Pasha’s officers had transmitted the Turk’s invitation to send deputies to the camp to treat. A little later, she and d’Aramon, Nicolay, de Seurre and Gabriel, watching silently in the background, saw the knights arrive, close-guarded by marching Janissaries. They had sent Commander Fuster of Majorca and the Chevalier Guenara, both Spanish, both enemies of France. Gabriel alone made the sign of the cross as they passed and Guenara, noticing, hesitated and would have stopped if the escort hadn’t jolted him forward with some brusqueness. The Order, she supposed with remote pity, had never stood lower than that.
Soon they heard the terms. The knights were willing to surrender the city and castle of Tripoli provided that Suleiman’s general would give the Governor, the knights, the garrison and the natives life and liberty, with ships to carry them and all their belongings to Malta or Sicily. And Sinan, black eyes cold, his dark Jewish face watchful, had laughed, and when he had done laughing had said, paring his nails, that he might begin to consider their wants when he had been reimbursed by the Order for all Osmanli expenses of the expedition. The knights were to pay the soldiers of Islâm for their trouble at Mdina, Gozo and Tripoli.
Even Fuster and Guenara could not conceivably agree; no man could. It was precisely why Sinan had asked it. It was Gabriel who waylaid Dragut, while tempers were rising, and as a businessman might, laid before him the facts Sinan Pasha had ignored. To prolong the siege might allow help to reach the city. Desperation itself might drive the knights to a last, costly stand. More: by ruining the walls, Sinan would expose himself when in possession. The knights might retake the city before its defences could be repaired, since the season was near when no blockade was possible by sea.
He added one thing more; and how much it cost him, no one was allowed to know. ‘In any case,’ said Malett, Knight Grand Cross, to the Turkish corsair Dragut, ‘once the treaty is signed, his excellency the General is master, and can keep it or not as he feels inclined. In his place, none need deign to quibble.’
And Dragut, clapping the knight companionably on the shoulder with his broad palm, had gone off to intercept Sinan Pasha, who by Suleiman’s orders must regard his advice. The delegation, chivvied from the General’s tent at sword-point, waited drawn-faced under the canopies while Dragut and Sinan Pasha conferred. Granted leave, unexpectedly, to approach them, the Baron d’Aramon and de Seurre found that, for the moment, the barrier of suspicion and hatred had dissolved in their fear.
It seemed then unlikely that either knight would