Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [128]
To de Seurre and others of his party, waiting in silence, the childish battle seemed endless. With the forced artistry of any man dealing long at the Supreme Porte, d’Aramon moved from threat to compliment, from compliment to appeal, from appeal to coaxing. And at length, as Sinan had probably intended all along, for the price of all the remaining royal treasure in d’Aramon’s galley, the General undertook to set free most of the knights and two hundred of the others arrested, provided that he chose these himself.
So, enthroned under the light canopies in the dreadful heat of the afternoon, Dragut and Salah Rais at his side, the Turkish General sat outside Tripoli and made his choice while the Ambassador watched.
Under the pointing finger the Marshal was liberated, to be lifted gently by de Seurre and d’Aramon’s nephew and helped to walk. One by one likewise the older French knights were unbound, whose injury might with justice mean reprisals. Two from Germany were freed; four from Italy. Then, moving away from the ranks of the Order, Sinan began to select from the men, women and children of Tripoli and the castle the oldest, the weakest, the poorest, as he had done at Gozo. And in due time, these were all taken away.
The screaming of the hundreds still left behind woke Jerott Blyth in the end to sun, to noise, to the sharp bonds on his hands and feet, to empty sand on either side of him ending, farther off, in scattered figures like his own—de Poissieu, who had so often urged a fight to the death; the youngest and fittest of the French; some Italian knights from Charles V’s own states; and every knight of the Order belonging to Spain.
De Herrera’s fears had been fulfilled. The full venom of the Sultan was to fall on the subjects of the Emperor, his greatest enemy in Christendom.… Then Jerott saw that Gabriel knelt beside him.
‘Lie still, my son,’ said Graham Malett, and guided the other man back to lie in the shade of his own body. ‘D’Aramon is begging for your life. Sinan Pasha is threatening to keep back twenty knights who have roused his displeasure, to sell into slavery or to convert. If it’s any comfort to you,’ he added, in the loved and familiar tones of sanity and unshakable confidence, ‘you must have done an extraordinary amount of damage before they felled you, in order to qualify.’
‘I killed somebody, I think,’ said Jerott thickly. He was thinking: total contribution to the Religion, one man. It was like being sent to Purgatory for crushing an ant. ‘Are you all right? And everyone?’
‘You’ve had a bad crack on the head,’ said Gabriel gently. ‘Don’t you know? Your helmet has gone. D’Aramon and half a dozen of us are here to witness the … formal surrender. The rest have gone aboard the Ambassador’s galley. Your friend is among them, I believe. Or was among them.’
‘Lymond?’ Jerott sat up, his ears drumming, his eyes blind, and after a moment was able to see clearly Gabriel’s lightly-sunburnt, clean-shaven face, with the short, straight nose and the fine mouth in repose. Malett smiled.
‘M. le Comte de Sevigny. No aspersions on his extreme ability: he was captured by pure accident while trying to free his lady friend. Luckily, I believe Dragut recognized him, and for past services appears to have overlooked this adventure. He is free, as we are. As you will be—somehow.’
‘Was among the French party, you said,’ repeated Jerott with a kind of monotonous persistence. His head was splitting. ‘Where is he now, then?’
‘No one,’ said Graham Malett gravely, ‘should ever be certain of reading that young man’s mind, but if I were permitted to wager, I should expect to find him at this moment in the bay of Tripoli with a pirate called Thompson, preparing a deserted boat most effectively for sail.’
Afterwards, Jerott was to realize that in that short exchange Gabriel had shielded not only his body from the sun. Behind him, during this brief interval, the last shrewish discussion had ended between Sinan