Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [234]
There were people he knew in the tavern: a surprising collection of gentlemen of the chamber off duty, merchants, men of the Church, and lairds from Fife, the Lothians and the Merse. Salablanca had made himself scarce. Adam, sitting comfortably tired in the late afternoon sunshine outside the tavern door, a pot of wine and a wedge of bread and mutton on the board in front of him, was introduced to a number of strangers who came out from the smoky turmoil inside to speak to his leader. Twice a friend of his own came across to greet him.
Inevitably, after a while, he lost Lymond altogether to the company inside. Watching him through the open window moving desultorily, wine in hand, from table to table, Adam guessed that a little well-concealed research into the atmosphere at the palace was going on and stretching his booted legs comfortably, left Lymond to it. It was then that, idly watching the cobbled street that led past the palace, he saw a little group of horsemen shouldering their way through the crowds, and recognized in the lead the burly, black-browed hulk whom Lymond had called Cormac O’Connor.
He had a moment, perhaps, in which to wonder whether it was coincidence that Oonagh O’Dwyer’s lover was making direct for the tavern where Lymond was. Then, as the group arrived, dismounted and silently surrounded him, he realized that Cormac O’Connor, too, had used his eyes on the journey from the Magdalena, and that he himself, sitting outside the inn door, had been as good as a signpost. Then the table, with his food on it, was kicked rattling to the ground, and a knotted, gloved hand travelled casually for the pit of his stomach. ‘Faix, we know ye can run,’ said the son of kings, while his companions laughed. ‘Can ye jump now, as well?’
Adam Blacklock might have been tired, might have been heavy with food, did certainly have his weaknesses. But after a season at St Mary’s, assault technique was not one of them. The big Irishman’s fist didn’t reach the cloth over Adam’s hard belly. Instead, his wrist was seized in a triangle of iron: there were two quick movements, and before the grin was off his face Cormac hit the inn wall behind Blacklock with a crash, and Adam, his sword and dagger both out and the upset table between himself and O’Connor’s six men, was waiting watchfully for O’Connor to pick himself up.
The inn door was at his back, but Adam didn’t trouble to call. He took O’Connor’s next rush with elbow and sword, and spun round in time to spike with his dagger point the man who came in at him over the table. The man screamed and O’Connor spat at him in Gaelic as he cleared the table with a kick and, sword out, came shoulder to shoulder with two others at Adam. A voice behind Adam’s shoulder, gently rebuking, said, ‘Cormac dear: you don’t want to fight us all, do you? It’s so hot for hopping about.’ And Lymond, loitering in the tavern doorway with a growing crowd of spectators, raised his eyebrows at the Irishman, whose sword-hand slowly fell. ‘Christ, it’s the singin’ acrobat, playin’ the cat’s melody behind the strong arm of his nurse,’ said Cormac O’Connor, and ignoring both Blacklock and his men, waiting watchfully for orders, he walked slowly forward to Francis Crawford.
Lymond’s level blue gaze did not shift from the big, bronzed, sweating frame. He waited, dry as ash, with his peculiar bleached elegance that Adam had long since given up trying to capture, and said eventually, ‘Adam defends himself, not me; and does it most ably, as you have noticed. Would you care to pick your friend up? They get hysterical about litter. Brawling, too,’ he added, as an afterthought.
‘Do you tell me?’ said Cormac O’Connor. He said it very softly, but each word fell like a small, starving leech into the gossip-gorged body of Falkland. ‘And what do they say, my delicate fellow, what do they say of the little, whispering, crawling person