Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [261]
‘Blacklock?’ Richard said.
‘I have known for some time,’ Adam said. It seemed as if he had known it for ever; and that with trust had gone all that he had ever believed.
‘And Guthrie?’
Alec Guthrie, whose profession was arms and whose first loves were honesty and justice and human rights, said, ‘I have weighed these two men also, long before today. What we all must remember, and keep remembering, is that this is not the Church against the rebellious intellect, just as it is not a struggle of Christian values perverted against a great faith.’ Alec Guthrie paused and, his eyes on Lymond’s still face, grinned.
‘The argument got a bit specious to my mind at times: if there’s a man in the district with a soul white as a burde claith, it’s not Francis Crawford. But in Graham Reid Malett goes a monk who is false as a diamond of Canada. I’ll join your verloren hoop.’
‘And I!’ said Thompson, and crashed his knotted fist on the board so that the empty cups rattled. And as Richard sat down, satisfaction on his face, and the women nodded agreement, Lymond spoke calmly.
‘We are, then, unanimous. We are high-handed together; and if we do the Church wrong, then we cough together in hell. There are questions you will wish to ask of myself and de Nicolay, and tasks I have to burden you with. These will do later. There is food coming, I am told. Let us forget Graham Malett, briefly, till after that.’
It was over. Stretching painfully, Adam wondered if his aching back were his alone, or shared by them all. The tension had been at times as much as he could stand; the summing-up, now he came to think of it, deliberately brief.
At his side, Lymond rose. They were all getting up, stamping their feet, smiling, a little subdued because of what they had learned and what they had undertaken. Thompson, heaving up from beside Sybilla, reached out a hairy wrist to thump her son’s back.
But Lymond had gone, moving unnoticed between chair and table and the disordered, discoursing company in the flickering light. The door clicked and Adam, shouldering swiftly towards it passed Archie Abernethy, thoughtfully chewing a chicken bone. The former Keeper removed it, revealing the gap-toothed cavity of his mouth, and said, ‘In a moment, sir. He hasn’t gone far.’ Adam opened the door.
It was true. A little below him, where the stair widened to accommodate a window embrasure, Lymond had stopped to look through the panes, one hand gripping the woodwork.
The fingers of that hand were white with pressure. Adam Blacklock stepped back quickly from his vantage point, and silently closing the big doors, walked round the table to find Sybilla, and salute her.
XIV
The Axe Falls
(St Mary’s, September 1552)
CHEESE-WAME HENDERSON was a big man, despite the pot-belly that gave him his name. He was not the first of his family to serve the Somervilles; he had grown up with the kind severities of Gideon and worshipped his widow Kate. But most of all, he was marshmallow in the hands of Philippa, whom he had taught to look after her ponies and pets, and who had taught him in return the family brand of acid and affectionate humour.
When Philippa had first demanded his help in eluding Kate and travelling to St Mary’s, he had indignantly refused. He was there now because he had discovered, to his astonishment, that she was desperate, and perfectly capable of going without him. Why she had got it into her young head she must see this man Crawford, Cheese-wame didn’t know. But after pointing out bitterly that (a) he would lose his job; (b) the rogues in the Debatable would kill them, (c) that she would catch her death of cold and (d) that Kate would never speak to either of them again, he went, his belt filled with knives and her belongings as well as his own in the two saddlebags behind his powerful thighs,