Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [205]
‘Trust is a secular word in our part of the world,’ said Lymond. He drew away slightly. ‘We operate on Faith. The heavenly light from the navel. Fed on recherché meats to sacred melodies, like the lion of Heliopolis.’
‘With a public whipping-post outside?’
‘You know too much,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s necessary. And applied with a fearful justice. Or the mercenaries, of course, would leave.’
‘Don’t your monks in armour complain?’ said Kate, her voice bantering; pure distress in her eyes. Even her concern about Philippa had gone.
‘An Order that bastinadoes its slaves? They’d find it difficult, thank God. I have enough trouble with a growing tendency among the lower ranks to divide us into the forces of light and of darkness. I don’t mind being labelled devilish but I do mind being regarded as unlucky. The only way to answer that is by a string of successes. Which we have had.’
‘But not by luck. I know you don’t want to sit down,’ said Kate rapidly. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about what’s happened. I know you don’t want to distress me. I know you want to tell me quickly about Philippa and go. But if you will countenance an onlooker’s opinion, I think you should go to bed first.’
There was an inimical silence. It might of course have been better put. But at least she would be spared the obvious response. In the end, Lymond said merely, ‘Thank you, but no. I must go back.’
‘To hold somebody’s trembling hand?’
‘To hold somebody’s trembling hand with a dagger in it,’ he said.
That was the point at which to leave it. Kate didn’t. She said baldly, ‘You’ve left St Mary’s to itself for three days. If you daren’t leave it any longer, after all the time you’ve devoted to it, then you must know you’ve failed.’
Lymond said softly, ‘That is the only thing you may not say to me.… Kate, superb Kate: I will not be mothered.’
‘Mothered!’ Kate’s small, undistinguished face was black with annoyance. ‘I would sooner mother a vampire. I am merely trying to point out what your browbeaten theorists at St Mary’s ought surely to have mentioned in passing. Health is a weapon of war. Unless you obtain adequate rest, first your judgement will go, and then every other qualification you may have to command, and either way, the forces of light will have a field-day in the end.’
There were two big chairs near him, one of them in the immediate path of the flood of sunshine creeping over the polished floor from her big western windows. Kate sat on the arm of the other and said, ‘I know you better, by the way, than to suppose that you came here to do the sensible thing by persuasion. No one would be more stunned than I should if you agreed.’
‘I haven’t got that sort of pride,’ said Lymond drily, and smiled. ‘I’m going back, Kate, as soon as we have talked, you and I. I’ve spent six months and a small fortune training so that I or anyone else at St Mary’s can handle and go on handling an emergency for quite a long time, and throw off fatigue reasonably well at the end. This is, if you like, an emergency. When I’ve dealt with it, I shall lie about willingly with a flagon of wine and a nymph.’
‘I believe you,’ said Kate coldly. ‘Like Terminus: with no feet and arms.… In the meantime, I presume you may eat? Your henchmen are being fed, and you’ll look a trifle quaint making a ceremonial stop to feed by yourself on the way home if you don’t. I promise not to pollute the pork chops with drugs. I shan’t even insist you sit down to it, although if you’re not giddy with circling the room like a blowfly, I am.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lymond rudely, and sat down in the other chair. ‘Does that satisfy you? Kate, I came here to talk about Philippa. I know she got home safely from the tower. Did you understand my letter?’
‘I understood that you were sorry you struck her unconscious,’ said Kate. ‘The rest was a little ambiguous. I gathered you wanted me to keep her at home and under my eye. I have.’
‘You have. Where is she now, for example?’ asked Lymond.
‘In the v——uh, henhouse,