Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [154]
‘Gentlemen. The apologies of Mr Crawford for disturbing you. Your presence is required, dressed, in the great hall in five minutes. I am asked to say that any gentleman later than this will be free to leave St Mary’s at once.’
No one was late. But the quality of the silence when, seated grimly in rows in the blazingly lit hall, a bunch of dissident intellectuals awaited their leader, was corrosive in the extreme.
Lymond had been little in evidence that day: the sheer bulk of paper-work awaiting him on this his first visit to the altered St Mary’s must have been daunting in itself. But now, when they were scarcely assembled, he came quickly on to the empty dais, bareheaded and unsmiling, glanced round, noting numbers, and then spoke, pleasantly and without unduly raising his voice.
‘Gentlemen.… This is not the last time I shall exact from you unquestioning obedience. It is, however, the last time I shall do it without prior consultation.’
Clever stuff, thought Jerott sardonically. There was a fragile slackening of the outrage in the atmosphere and Lymond felt it, he was sure. He spoke again. ‘By now you have met each other. You are all intelligent men, and men of consequence and ability. The others who will join you are of the same kind. Among you there will be no rank and no distinction. Any money this force may earn will be distributed equally among you. Your living expenses should we earn no income will be guaranteed by me. We are therefore a money-making unit, but the financial risk is mine, and these, which I am making clear to you now, are my conditions for taking it.’
Two conditions, said Jerott Blyth’s wincing spirit. ‘Worship me, and make me a rich man.’
As if he read his mind, Lymond’s eyes rested for a moment on Jerott’s, then passed on. He said, ‘Your reasons for joining me are your own affair. You should know mine for having you. There is no standing army in England, although there has been an attempt to ensure one by paying noble landowners to raise and arm troops and to produce them at need. When the Government needs help it has to call in mercenaries under their captains from Germany and the Low Countries.’
He paused, testing their restlessness: no one moved. ‘In Scotland there is no money for annual commissions. Even if there were, the natural leaders have been decimated by wars and divided by religious differences and rival claims to the throne. There have been proposals for a standing army of mercenaries; there is strong pressure currently to instal an official army of French. Both these would be operated for and through the Crown, and in my view both would be dangerous.…’
Below, someone stirred. Alec Guthrie, his greying hair thickly on end, said impatiently in his grating, lecturer’s voice, ‘May we speak? No one ever made a fortune protecting Scotland. If the French want to spend money that way, let them get on with it.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Lymond. ‘If France or anyone else wants to spend money on that little job, let them pay us. Mercenaries and foreign garrisons we all know cause endless trouble. In any case the Emperor probably wouldn’t release any more Germans or Swiss, and France has other uses for her troops, even if she could persuade them to go on fighting here.…’
‘… So we are to become the fighting arm of the Queen Dowager,’ said Hercules Tait lazily. ‘I had a strange feeling it would come to that all along.’
‘We are to become,’ said Lymond, and suddenly his pleasant voice cut like edged glass, ‘the strongest independent fighting unit these islands have ever known. We take work, for which we shall be paid, and we lay down the terms under which we carry out such work. If we think the work undesirable from any point of view, moral or material, we refuse.