Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [150]
Her visitor was, she found, that gallant crusading hero, Joleta’s brother. Taking him into the small parlour she rarely used, Kate was civil and Philippa effusive. Kate had set up, her daughter knew, a characteristic resistance against the legend of Gabriel which had stiffened more than a little since Philippa’s own glowing account, suitably edited, of the Hampton Court encounter. Sir Graham also had the misfortune to be staying with the Earl of Ormond, whom she disliked.
Kate had had much the same reaction to Joleta when the girl had arrived at Flaw Valleys in a cloudburst of reverent awe: only after she proved that Joleta was human did Kate unbend and become her usual sardonic self. Now, Philippa watching with an experienced eye saw that Sir Graham Malett was aware of this guardedness and was amused by it, even to the extent of apologizing for his noble Irish friend. Ormond, he agreed gravely over Kate’s lavish refreshments, was a sorry young pensioner of his country’s enemy, but one must be tolerant. He had to be so or hang.
Kate, who did not like being humoured either, switched the subject to Malta but did not succeed in drawing him either on the fall of Tripoli or on the conduct of the Grand Master. ‘What, no harems unlocked, no spirited slave-girls carried safely to freedom? What a dull time crusaders are having these days,’ said Kate at length. ‘I shall need, obviously, to get the coarse side of the story out of Francis Crawford.’
‘No,’ said Gabriel with a moment’s diffidence. ‘That I shouldn’t recommend.’
Kate, who had half her mind on Margaret Erskine helping to show the cook how to do a French chicken, jerked her attention back and said, ‘Why? I’m sure he’d run anybody’s white slave traffic with exceptional skill.’
She wished heartily that he would go away. Coming from France as he did, it was impossible that he should know about Tom Erskine, but she did not intend that he and Margaret should meet. Her own powers of dissimulation were not very great; his were probably nonexistent. Nor did it seem fair to ask such a man to play a part in a deception.
In any case, he was deep in thought on some other subject entirely. After a considerable pause he said unexpectedly, ‘I wonder, Mistress Somerville, if you know a man called Cormac O’Connor?’
‘I know of him,’ said Kate shortly. ‘He’s an outlawed Irishman who’s been trying for years to get French or Scottish help to drive the English out of Ireland.’
‘He was also the possessor,’ said Gabriel without looking at her, ‘of a very beautiful mistress. I met him in France the other week, in Ormond’s company, as I was telling you. He parted with the woman in the end—he swears to our incorrigible friend Francis. In any case, it is a fact that Francis joined her in Tripoli, and lost her there. She was an unlucky woman; and the mistress of a knight of the Order for long months before that; but they had a real attraction for each other. I tell you only that you won’t take the subject of women lightly, when next you meet.’
‘I won’t meet him ever again,’ said Philippa forbiddingly.
Gabriel, seated in a chair too small for him, smiled at Kate, who merely lifted her brows. His smile grew broader. ‘There seems to be a general disenchantment,’ he said. ‘Joleta writes in the same, if not stronger terms. I’m sorry, because I was relying on her to exert a little moral blackmail.’
Tact was not yet Philippa’s strongest point. ‘But Mr Crawford kissed her!’ she said.
‘Philippa!’ Kate could