Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [198]
The others wouldn’t have it. ‘No.’ Alec Guthrie, small eyes swollen with sleeplessness, turned his grating voice on Lymond. ‘Sir Graham was against it. The rest of us persuaded him and he yielded to a majority judgement on your orders. There lay the essence of the mistake.’
Graham Malett’s own voice cut in quietly. ‘I disagree. As Mr Crawford once said, we are a council of experts, not a dictatorship. There is no room for a Grand Master here.’
‘Really?’ said Lymond’s cold voice. ‘What do you do on the galleys when a galleass with a thousand Turks aboard sticks her irons on you? Hold a conference first? In the field, one man leads, for good or for bad. In St Mary’s, we confer, as we are doing now. To confuse the two situations is lunacy.’
There was a brief silence. ‘Then I’m afraid neither of us distinguished himself yesterday,’ said Gabriel ruefully. ‘I’m going to abdicate in Jerott’s favour next time you are … away.’
‘It was a pity,’ said Lymond coolly, ‘that you didn’t find the Scotts quickly, and divide your force between them and the Kerrs. The other flaws in the action, it seems to me, were outwith our control. Someone made quite unexpected trouble by paying the Turnbulls to kill and brand all those animals. And the Kerrs had a most unexpected piece of luck in breaking into that ground floor room at the Keep.’
‘They’d batter the locks with hackbuts,’ said Jerott contemptuously. ‘Or the hinges were rusty. It’s an old tower.’
‘They didn’t, and they weren’t,’ said Lymond. ‘They used a key. Maybe the Nixons keep the key under the doormat. I shouldn’t know. But that was the third unfortunate occurrence, if you could call it that.’
‘What do you mean?’ It was Gabriel’s voice, soft but severe.
‘That someone doesn’t like the Scotts or the Kerrs. I have no idea who—the English, would you say? Or one of their rival families on the Borders? I mention it with diffidence,’ said Lymond, with no diffidence at all in his manner, ‘and at the risk, I am aware, of misunderstanding. But we failed as we did for quite extraordinary reasons, nothing to do with our capabilities. Given the information we had, we acted rightly. I, for one, do not regret anything I have personally done.’
‘Or not done?’ It was Jerott Blyth again, but in an undertone. It did not escape Francis Crawford, who turned his head and smiled. ‘I thought your objections were to my excesses, not my omissions,’ he said drily. ‘Sir Graham, if it seems to you that we have covered all the necessary ground, I don’t think there is much profit in talking longer. Your wound must be causing you pain.’
Sir Graham rose, his face pale under his golden thatch. ‘There are other things that pain me more,’ he said abruptly. ‘You are fortunate in having nothing of which to accuse yourself.’ For a moment he stood, his clear, world-weary gaze on Lymond’s impervious stare; then shut his lips tightly and left.
They all began to get up. ‘Whatever do you think he means?’ said Plummer, drifting past, to Lymond’s bent head. Lymond stood, so suddenly that Plummer took a step back. ‘That surveyors there be, that greedily gorge up their covetous guts,’ he said. ‘What was it that you and Tait were so concerned should not be wasted in Nixon’s chapel?’
Plummer’s elegant body became rigid, but although his eyes flickered to Hercules Tait’s and back, he did not flush. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘There was a very fine little Byzantine plaque on the wall, with a fragment of cross and some angels. The poor man had obviously no idea of its beauty—well, you had only to look at the rubbish he put on his plaster elsewhere. Probably stuck it up to cover a hole. But to anyone who knew.… You must take my word for it,’ said Plummer, getting at last into his stride. ‘It would have been sacrilege to let it burn.’
‘I saw it. It was a silver-gilt Staurotheque,’ said Lymond. ‘About four hundred years old. With a figure of Christ enthroned in gold and enamels, and angels confronted. I travel too, sometimes, you know.… You were, I presume, going to present it to your own Church of St Giles?’
‘I