Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [125]
‘If men of our race had died today, justice would have been done,’ said Dragut cheerfully. ‘They did not. Without proof, none can convict thee of any crime save the rape of thine own woman. That she died is thy affliction. Thou wilt remain from sight and mind until the Order leaves, and I shall send thee with them.’
‘Should I go?’ Francis Crawford said. ‘Should we all go?’
There was a little silence. Then Dragut said peaceably, ‘You wish me to kill for you?’ Then as Lymond violently said, ‘No!’ he smiled, and continued serenely to speak. ‘There is no place here for such men as these. To me, thou art welcome ever. But an infidel, a giaúr, cannot fight for the Sultan.’
‘You do not recommend, then, that I or another should stay?’ Lymond said.
‘No. I do not recommend either,’ said Dragut, ‘that thou spillest thy heartsblood for this order of cravens. To every man, his hearth calls. There thy duty may lie.’
All the little colour there was had left Lymond’s face. He looked suddenly desperately tired, and sick, and in doubt. Without answering he rose and crossed the small tent. There he stopped and spoke to Dragut over his shoulder, obliquely as Dragut preferred.
‘On Thursday, the fifth day of Allâh’s creation, He made the angel Sigad id Din, who brought dust and air and fire and water to Allâh from the far corners of the world, from which Adam was next created. Then Sigad id Din entered Paradise with Adam, and taught him to eat the fruits of the earth.…’
‘True. Thou knowest well our writings,’ said Dragut’s hoarse, level voice. ‘Then Allâh, as thou wilt remember, ordered Sigad id Din to create Eve.’
Lymond, fingering his belt, head bent, said, ‘It was a bad Thursday’s work.’
‘But in the end,’ said Dragut peaceably, ‘the peacock angel was made by Allâh lord over all the rest. Carry with thee this tale. A hunter went killing sparrows one cold day, and his eyes gave forth tears as he went. Said one bird to another, “Behold, this man weeps.” Said the other, “Turn thine eyes from his tears. Watch his hands”.
‘I have always thought,’ he added with sudden encouragement, ‘that there are in thee the talents for a wondrous peacock.’
‘My God, in Scotland?’ said Lymond, swinging round, all the mockery back in his voice. ‘An army of angels would merely dissolve in the rain.’
‘Then take an army of men,’ said the corsair, raising his thick, greying brows. ‘Or was this not in the first place a part of thy mind?’
‘And Sigad id Din?’ Lymond said.
This time Dragut Rais also got up, smoothing his short coat as he prepared to go at last. ‘I have already spoken,’ he said.
A moment later and he had gone, having achieved all he intended to do; and Lymond, now lying quietly, his face on his wrists, received the mercy of solitude at last.
For him, the worst battle of Tripoli was fought then, alone on that last morning, when the decision that was to change the course of his life had to be taken, in fatigue and distress and with the echo of his own voice, then and always, bright and cold in his mind.
‘Dear me … dear me … dear me.… And who is going to tell the Governor of Gozo?’
*
Jerott Blyth, told that Lymond could be depressed by the death of a mistress, would have cackled with laughter. As it was, he was in no mood to be merry. For French knights and Spaniards had united at last, and the Order, outraged, had met de Montfort’s shaming message with a unanimous decision … to fight to the death.
Had they done so, Europe might have echoed through the ages with the Order’s martyrdom and fame. As it was, like de Vallier’s resistance, it came far too late. The knights had chosen death with honour on the ramparts, but the garrison refused to obey.
Half that night, harangued, exhorted, threatened, with whip and bastinado freely used, the civilians and soldiers in Tripoli held out for their lives. And in the end the knights recognized defeat. At dawn, de Montfort would return to Sinan Pasha with the report that his condition could not be fulfilled, as the city held no money at all. But that, provided