Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [233]
‘And if he doesn’t find Paris in Ireland?’
‘Then we shall have to wait until Paris comes to Scotland, and persuade my favourite agent to give us his records then, won’t we? Which will in turn warn him that exposure is in the air, and make us his criminal associates … syndication with Thompson is proving rather expensive,’ said Francis Crawford reflectively. ‘I feel that our wellbeing, yours and mine, is about to be sacrificed for the greater good, and I am not prepared to sanction it, just yet. Why do you stay with me?’
It was the kind of sudden question that made his stammer worse. Eventually, Adam got it out. ‘I have a f-fancy to draw you. Let us say.’
‘You’ve drawn me hundreds of times. You have a sixth sense for evil, haven’t you, Adam? Gabriel was right when he said you shouldn’t have been a soldier. Your eye tells your brain too much. I should have left you on board. You haven’t sketched Randy. Or any of the lot at St Mary’s now.’
‘No,’ said Adam. There was a long silence, broken by Lymond laughing softly. ‘Your company is most disarming, Adam. How many rages would Jerott have achieved by now? But you are entitled to ask the obvious question and expect an answer, at least.’
Adam Blacklock smiled. ‘I don’t like t-trouble, that’s all. All right. Who is the man we were following, and have now passed, since our pace has dropped to a little less than murderous?’
Lymond grinned. ‘Yes, we’ve passed him. Didn’t you see him, a thick black tree of a man at the last posting-station, on a broken-down hack? The poor beast is supporting a King’s thigh, my boy. That great, bouncing basthoon of an Irishman on his way, too, to Falkland is my brutish friend Cormac O’Connor.’
‘Ah. We are heading for an unp-pleasantness,’ said Adam Blacklock.
‘We are heading for that, anyway, I suspect,’ said Lymond cheerfully. ‘The Queen Mother doesn’t send out orders of this kind just to make Robbie Forman sea-sick.… What do you think is going wrong at St Mary’s at this moment?’
‘Why should anything be going wrong at St Mary’s?’ said Blacklock, after a moment.
‘Why indeed?’ said Lymond. ‘I panic easily, that’s all. I don’t know how long the Queen Dowager will keep me, but if Gabriel is still at Falkland, you had better find him and wait there until I come.’
‘And O’Connor?’ said Adam.
‘Thompson brought him. He was on the Magdalena when she arrived, but disembarked, encouraged by Jock, before we came on board. Thompson thinks he has merely come to petition the Queen Mother for rebel money, and the visit will be short. On the other hand, he may be making up his mind to betray Paris soon. And if he is, I rather want to dissuade him … but without Ross Herald at my elbow, for choice.… It would be nice, Adam, if you could make a cartoon of Cormac O’Connor’s resolves for me.’
‘Why? Am I likely to meet him?’
‘My dear man, Falkland is a village round a palace,’ said Lymond. ‘Nothing more. Put Cormac O’Connor in a back street in London, and you would meet him in a quarter of an hour. He’s that kind of man.’
XII
The Crown and the Anchorite
(Falkland Palace, August 1552)
FALKLAND was full. The pepperpot towers of the palace, the statues and the handsome grilled French windows rose from a blue haze of woodsmoke. Every lodging and inn in the little burgh was filled with the Queen Dowager’s staff and courtiers. Only because he had no need of a room and a lethal kind of charm when he chose to use it, was Francis Crawford able to command a meal for himself and his companions on arrival at the principal tavern in the little square.
He had no need of a room because he had found two invitations waiting for him: one from Sir Graham Malett, who was staying in the Order’s lodging in Falkland, and one from Robert Beaton of Creich, Keeper of Falkland, who happened also