Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
But once they left St Mary’s, there was so much of moment to discuss and to plan that Jerott lost sight of his grievance, and even Adam Blacklock abandoned his stutter. They stopped at Midculter to pick up Lymond’s brother, who wanted to discuss a cargo with Thompson, but to Jerott’s profound relief saw no sign of Sybilla or Gabriel’s sister Joleta.
By late evening they got to Dumbarton, and dismounted at the Governor’s Barque, where the candles shone in the unshuttered casements of the inn’s single hired parlour, to show that Thompson had come, and was waiting.
In eight years, Scottish pirates had taken a total of something like two million crowns in gold out of Flemish shipping alone. Jockie Thompson, who had a number of other imaginative sidelines besides, believed in making the most of his brief visits to land. Instead of his old leather jacket and stained, salt-rotted breech-hose, he was hung like a hoy with a six-pound furred gown, as Lymond noted aloud, and the gold chains like futtock shrouds on his chest. The black beard and the tough brosy face glistened with fat as he swallowed ox tongues swilled down with Bordeaux and groused about the lightage fees at Dover these days and the customars who, far from taking a gentleman’s word, would drive an iron rod through your bales to see if you had hidden hackbuts.
‘And had you?’ said Lord Culter cheerfully. Relaxed, well-fed round their private table under the flickering tapers, they had disposed before the meal was half over with his personal business and, he guessed, were only waiting for his tactful withdrawal later on to complete whatever transaction Lymond and Thompson were entertaining. It was, he knew, a matter of arranging for Thompson to take the St Mary’s officers, in groups, for sea training that summer. It did not need much imagination to guess that what they would practise was piracy, nor that what Lymond was here at the moment to receive was contraband stores, to keep Thompson sweet.
Richard Crawford watched his younger brother, who had spent the better part of a day and a night in the saddle without turning a hair, handle this explosive brute of a seaman like an artist while Blacklock, his stiff leg stretched under the table, looked on smiling and the other fellow, the handsome, smouldering knight Francis dragged with him everywhere, was despite himself drawn into the game.
‘Was I smuggling hackbuts?’ said Thompson now, moving the red wine aside and taking up the aqua-vitæ. ‘By God’s breid I was, but not in the cargo: in the fender casks. I tell ye, I had a dainty hand on the tiller yon day, drawing Magdalena off frae the jetty. Ae dunt on the planking, and guns would’ve burst from they fenders like a nursing mother out o’ her bodice.… Man, are ye weel? Ye’re not drinking!’
‘I’m not drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ Lymond said crisply. Thompson’s voice, as always, had early grown thick. As always, it was not likely to get any thicker, since although Thompson’s capacity was phenomenal, he had a head like an ox.
Now, he flung back his head and, without swallowing, let the blistering spirit run down his throat. Then he banged down his cup and refilled it, staring at Lymond. ‘Better men than you, friend, have yet to see Jock Thompson drunk.’
He turned his seamed, seaman’s eyes on Lord Culter. ‘It’s a grief, just, tae see a friend gone girlish as to the guts. I see you’ve not spared the flagon, my lord, and there you are, sober as one of the Pope’s knights.’ He had drunk just enough to be quarrelsome. ‘So drink sends the wee fellow foolish?’
Blacklock, raising his brows, looked down at his long hands. But Jerott Blyth, a glint in his black eyes, watched Lymond. Last year in France, he well knew from the gossip at home, Francis Crawford had nearly wrecked his career and succeeded in poisoning himself with unbridled drinking. In Malta he had been moderate. Here in Scotland he had stopped drinking completely—taking no risks, it seemed clear, of being led into excess. It roused in Jerott, who had perfect self-discipline, an emotion of purest