Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [162]
Jerott’s hand fell, his face going blank.
‘Neatly put,’ said Lymond, approving. His hand, also relaxed, fell back from his hilt.
‘And the same,’ said Joleta, rounding on him, ‘applies to you! Think twice, my smart friend, before you offer to thrash me. I’ll give you something else to remember me by; and it won’t be a scratch.’
‘Your hands are bleeding?’ said Jerott quietly. His chest heaving still from his exertions he looked from the man to the child and back again, his fists clenched, ready to act.
‘She cut herself on the glass she was trying to gouge my eyes out with,’ explained Lymond patiently. ‘She cut her feet on the wreckage and she got bruised because I don’t like being permanently mutilated on Thursdays. I may add that Friday is my day for raping; and I like it quieter than this, and they enjoy it.’
Still Blyth looked helplessly from one to the other. ‘Oh, go away! said Joleta at last, losing what was left of her patience, and seizing the teetering door, jerked it open.
For the first time, Lymond laughed. ‘I advise it, too. Armed with faith within and steel without, beat a retreat.’ Thoughtfully, he looked down at Joleta. ‘You are a violent, self-willed, well-shaped and dangerous creature, and I prefer your honest rages to your parlour archery. But who is going to explain to Lady Jenny?’
For the first time a smile also genuine lit Joleta’s golden face. ‘No explanations necessary. She’ll think it must be Friday.’ The smile on the face of Gabriel’s saintly little sister became wider and more malicious. ‘She’ll be furious,’ she remarked.
*
Never afterwards could Jerott clearly recollect that journey home. Waiting stiffly for Lymond, in a mental turmoil, he had tried to piece it out.
There had been a bitter struggle, in which Lymond must have been the aggressor. Yet the girl had shown no fear; had made fun of her rescuer … they both had, damn them … and had ordered him away. What had happened? Had Lymond prevailed? Was she, in her innocence, out of her senses? He saw her again, lying broken at his feet, and had resolved, against all his pride, on going upstairs once more, when Lymond appeared at his side.
‘Come along. We’ve wasted enough time on that spoiled brat,’ he said. ‘Are we loaded?’
‘She was hurt. What happened?’ He had to know.
‘Scratches. The Donati woman is slapping grease on them. She was making a nuisance of herself at Midculter, and when I threatened to thrash her she went for me. Enjoyed it, too.… Gabriel may think she’s a sister-angel, Brother-in-Christ, but she isn’t. It’s worth remembering.’
‘Why? For Fridays?’ said Jerott nastily, and strode away. She had shouted at him—that delicate child, bred in the cloister. Gabriel had been wrong to trust the force of his faith. He, a man and a knight could stand up to this worldly professionalism. Joleta might not.
His irritation increased when, setting off with the toiling ox-carts for St Mary’s, he observed that the gallant surgeon had been soothing his ruffled vanity with something out of the apothecary’s bottle, and was strikingly gay. In the men’s hearing Lymond said nothing, but the look on his face promised trouble when they got in: intoxication was one of the few cardinal sins at St Mary’s and they had only had trouble once before, with Adam Blacklock when his leg was giving him pain.
Alec Guthrie, another man of moderate intake, dropped back from the head of the column to mention caustically that it had enlivened their tedious work to observe one of their leaders returning from Boghall castle drunk, and the other fresh from a fight with some woman. This was by deduction, obviously, and Joleta’s name was not mentioned, Jerott noted, feeling ill.
Anyone but Guthrie would have had his head snapped off. Lymond instead said briefly, ‘You may leave Bell to me. The other issue was unavoidable. I haven’t spent