Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [25]
‘It’s a safe guess,’ said Kate, amused. ‘I’ve had three fights in the stockyard already. If she hadn’t been in bed ill half the time, God knows what would have happened.’
‘Trotty Luckup cured her, I hear?’
‘It looked like it,’ said Kate uncompromisingly. ‘She got her fee, anyway.’
‘That’s what I heard’, said Tom, relieved. ‘I came across the old dame the other day, in the cells for a drunken scold, and she had far more money on her than was likely—you know Trotty. But I was able to back up her story and save her a ducking. She’s no beauty, but fair’s fair.’
‘That woman will make her fortune,’ said Kate. ‘Look at all the advertisement her cure has had. My apothecary is threatening to disown me. You wouldn’t like to fall ill while you’re here so that I can give him a turn?’
‘Next time,’ said Tom earnestly, ‘I’ll fall off my horse on your doorstep.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Kate frankly. ‘He’s not very happy with bones. Something lingering with pimples in it is more in his line. Come when the apple trees are bearing, and help Philippa eat them.’
‘She hates Lymond still, does she?’ said Tom Erskine gently.
Kate nodded, and after a moment said, almost against her will, ‘I don’t think that other child would, though.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom Erskine cheerfully. ‘Joleta and Francis Crawford are unlikely to meet. And if they do, I’ll be there to see she’s the same girl that she is now, when Gabriel comes to fetch her.’
And he smiled over his shoulder, at where Joleta and Pippa between them were tumbling last-minute possessions into the cart, Philippa laughing and Joleta singing snatches of rather rude lyrics; and did not see the shiver that overtook Kate.
Part Two
THE EIGHT-POINTED
CROSS
I: Sailing Orders (Mediterranean, June/July 1551)
II: The Tongue of Gabriel (Maltese Archipelago, July 1551)
III: The Voice of the Prophet (Maltese Archipelago, July 1551)
IV: The Rape of Galatian (Mdina and Gozo, July 1551)
V: Hospitallers (Birgu, August 1551)
VI: God Proposes (Tripoli, August 1551)
VII: But Allâh Disposes (Tripoli, August 1551)
VIII: Fried Chicken (The Yoke of the Lord) (Tripoli, August 1551)
IX: The Invalid Cross (Tripoli, August 1551)
X: Hospitality (Malta, August 1551)
I
Sailing Orders
(Mediterranean, June/July 1551)
‘AND this convenient Scotsman, where is he?’ asked the Constable of France, pacing the floor.
The Chevalier de Villegagnon, closing the window against the midsummer heat, turned back into the rich little room. ‘M. Crawford is coming. It is not yet the appointed time,’ he said.
‘We forget,’ said a voice from the shadows in Italian-French. ‘M. de Villegagnon is impressed by the gentleman.’
An older voice, in identical accent, answered drily. ‘If the young Queen of Scotland has survived her sojourn here in France, it is partly due at least to M. Crawford of Lymond, you must admit. Youth and bravado, Leone, are delicious assets.’
‘In the right place,’ said Leone Strozzi sardonically, and strolled away from his brother as voices outside told the Constable’s visitor had come.
Francis Crawford of Lymond, whose name, had he known it, was being bandied so freely at that time in Flaw Valleys and his own home, had then been in France for eight months; and his middling loyal activities during that time had brought him notoriety and a title, as well as the pressing interest of the Dowager Queen of Scotland, Mary of Guise, whose long visit to the court of France was nearly over.
When he appeared at the doorway of Constable Anne de Montmorency’s parlour at Châteaubriant, France, on that hot June morning of 1551, only Piero Strozzi and Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon, who had known him in his native land, could assess the changes which the high living so forcibly described by his brother had brought. To the rest he was a slender, wheaten-haired foreigner in virginal velvet, with an affable expression. He paused on the threshold for just long enough to scan the four other guests in the room—M. de Villegagnon, the brothers Piero and Leone Strozzi,