Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [133]
‘If you enter Birgu, Marshal,’ said Gabriel, ‘it will mean prison. It may mean torture. It may bring degradation. It may even bring death. I do not consider that His Eminence will use impartial witnesses.’
Graham Malett renouncing all hope of justice and all prospect of the triumph of good was as close to ultimate horror as Jerott expected to reach. He said, ‘Have you told them? Anyone in their senses will know you at least to be impartial. What about de Villegagnon? He won’t support the Grand Master in downright falsehood. What about la Valette? Romegas? Isn’t anyone fighting?’
‘De Villegagnon knows everything I know. He will fight to the death,’ said Gabriel. ‘So will all the others you mention and their following. It makes no difference, as you should know. They are outnumbered. As for my being considered impartial.…’ He smiled, a little bleakly. ‘M. d’Aramon’s mythical sins, I am told, are mine also. For sharing his sly duplicity from the safety of the Turkish camp, I have been warned that I return to Malta at my peril. You and I, Marshal, will be martyred together.’
‘No!’ The exclamation was instant and final, from both the Ambassador and de Vallier. The Ambassador added curtly, ‘Martyrdom will not help the Order. I shall appear before this Council. Whether the Marshal does so or not is his affair. Be sure for my part I shall fully vindicate you. But your duty is amply done in stating our case and in bringing us this warning. To place yourself in the Order’s power while the Order is crazed with fear, obsessed with this feverish need to excuse to the Emperor the fall of his city … desperate possibly to conceal misappropriation of funds which must be the Grand Master’s blame alone … this is self-destruction. Leave de Villegagnon; leave Parisot who cannot at least be made scapegoats for Tripoli to fight what must be a long battle in the Order itself. I suggest to you your duty is quite other.’
‘What is that?’
‘Go with de Seurre here, who is also a knight. Take my letters to France informing the King what has happened. Remedy this spreading poison of falsehood. Tell the truth throughout Europe so that things are shown as they are.…’
‘Betray the rot within the Order?’ said Gabriel.
‘Expose it, Hospitaller, so that it may be cut out,’ said d’Aramon steadily.
‘It is my life,’ said Gabriel blankly, and it was Jerott, striding forward, black, furious, dynamic, who seized his arm and shook it. ‘You must not go back. It was my life, too. But if you will leave it, I shall go with you.’
Graham Malett shook his head, a dazed king; a man who had taken so many blows that even feeling had gone dead. ‘If the Marshal and my brothers go, of course I must return. I know what efforts M. d’Aramon made in the Turkish camp.…’
‘You have already testified to that: you told us. And the Grand Master, however much he may wish it, cannot harm me within Malta,’ said d’Aramon. ‘It is outside that I need your witness.’
‘I cannot speak against the Order,’ Gabriel repeated. He looked distraught. ‘I cannot subject the Order to question in France. And where else can I go?’
‘There is another ship in the harbour,’ said Jerott; and Graham Malett turned his eyes over the craning heads, broken already into hissing, arguing groups, to where a dark brigantine, lamps ablaze, lay idly on the black water.
For a long time he stared at it, while the tide of dispute and anxiety closed around him; the voices of d’Aramon, the Marshal, de Herrera, de Poissieu echoing and re-echoing meaninglessly as Jerott pushed to his side. Then he saw that Gabriel’s eyes were closed, his lips stirring, and realized that in anguish the other man had turned for his answer to prayer. So, he waited.
*
‘There’s something,’ said Thompson, and jerked his unkempt head across the dark water.
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