Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [268]
Sir Graham Malett paused, his shoulders thrown back, his clear eyes surveying them from his magnificent height, and like a schoolboy, passed his fingers through his badly-cut golden hair. ‘Meantime, foolishly, I must find something to live on. The Order impounded all I have, and although my needs are nothing, there is my sister.… But these are troubles that need not concern you. They concern me very little: my God will not desert me. So I shall take my sword and sell it wherever it may be needed to preserve Christ’s Church.… Perhaps, one day, I shall find a company to match this. I doubt it. I shall miss you all.’
Sir Graham Malett drew a deep breath. His blue eyes, over-brilliant, left the rumbling, rising throb of responding impulse and settled, slowly focusing in pleased astonishment, on the back of the hall. ‘Jerott! Already?’ And then, his whole face lambent with delight, ‘Joleta is here?’
You would expect Jerott Blyth to be tired. He had, after all, covered the ground between St Mary’s and Midculter twice since the afternoon. But he looked, to those who craned round, resenting Gabriel’s lost attention, like a man set on by thieves. Des Roches thought, ‘The girl is dead.’ And then, before he could help himself ‘Ah, now he will stay?’
Then the young man at the door, the grey blindness still in his face, said, ‘I couldn’t stop her. She should have stayed.’ And realizing, perhaps, from the altered expression of Gabriel’s face that he was making frightening nonsense, Jerott made a sharp and visible effort, his hands cramped to his thighs, and said, ‘Could you spare a moment, Sir Graham? Your sister is with me, but she is not.…’
He was saying ‘well’ when Joleta Malett, walking slowly, dreamlike in fatigue, came and stood by his side. Above the furred cloak she wore, its muddied hem dragging the ground, her face was pale as a windflower and misted with fine sweat. Her long hair, a tangled skein on one shoulder, was bronzed with it. ‘You haven’t told him,’ she said.
Her voice was reasonable, and just a little higher in pitch than was usual. Jerott said, ‘We shall tell him together, when he is alone. You mustn’t worry him here. Come to his room.’
‘No.’ Although addressing Jerott, Joleta’s filmed pale blue eyes were fixed on her brother. She said, ‘Tell him.’
There were two steps down from the dais. Graham Malett took them in one stride, and was halfway towards them when Joleta cried out. ‘No! Stay where you are. I want every man of them to know!’
‘Joleta!’ said Blyth desperately. She was unfit to travel. She should never have come. He had been through hell with her and then through worse than hell, anticipating this moment. He had carried her in his arms through the night from Midculter and she had said over and over, ‘I will tell them all. I will tell them all. They will all know what he has made of me.’ Sick with loathing, sick with revulsion after shouting, in the midst of his shock, at the useless duenna, raging over the absence of Sybilla and Richard Crawford to revile, he had been subdued by Joleta’s terrible need.
Now, leaving him at the door, she began to walk down the long hall. On either side, uneasily, admiringly, lasciviously in the last fumes of the sherry, the watching men scanned her; the child sister, the little flower of the nuns; Graham Malett’s translucent Joleta. Then, facing her brother, she stopped, and her white, kitten’s teeth sparkled. ‘I have a saint for a brother,’ she said. ‘Do you not envy me?’ and laughed.
Gabriel, his baby skin suddenly white, took a step forward. ‘Oh, no,’ said Joleta, and stepped back. ‘A saint for a brother. Who will say, “This poor young man who still lives by his senses can be taught by us both to lift his eyes to greater things