Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [272]
‘Of course. Thompson was your associate, but the Turks didn’t touch him, did they? Oonagh O’Dwyer knew what you were, so she had to die. Did Nicholas Upton recognize you, too, for a damned soul?’ And all the serenity gone from his eyes, Graham Malett laughed shortly.
‘What a fool I was, harnessed only in my Faith, believing you fought, with me, to repair the flaws in the Order. I offered you here my heart and the work of my hands, and when you seized the one and laughed at the other I thought, this is young arrogance and youthful cruelty; both will pass. And so I trusted you with Joleta …’ His tone changed.
‘Oh, be quiet!’ added Gabriel abruptly, swinging round, and the men he and Lymond had both led, who, surging from bench and table, roused and threatening, now filled all the space around and behind them, saw his strained face and the two shining tracks made by the tears on his face. ‘Be quiet! Is this a matter for drunken soldiers or for any of the common laws of society?’
‘It is a matter, I think, for the “fine instrument we call St Mary’s”,’ said Lymond’s undisturbed voice. ‘Leaving all our disillusionments aside, you cannot change leaders in a drunken brawl in the middle of the night and still hope to remain a company—what was it?—“worthy of renown throughout Christendom.” I shall not escape you. I have, I think, an answer to most of the accusations that trouble you, and it is very much to my own advantage to stay. Then you may hear the case on both sides in the cold light of sobriety and justice.’ His observant eyes swept them all, resting finally on the men who silently had approached his sides and stood now, breathing heavily, at his shoulder. One of them stepped back.
‘I am no more than one man,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘Whatever your decision, I shall honour it. And it will give you an opportunity to persuade Sir Graham, if you wish, to stay as your commander. At the moment, as you see, his only desire is to leave.’
With a hiss of steel, a second unsheathed sword joined Jerott’s before Lymond’s eyes. ‘No,’ said Randy Bell brutally. ‘You will be the one to leave.’ And knotting tighter and tighter, the circle about them moved inwards. Standing behind and between Jerott and Bell, a hand on each shoulder, ‘You should have married me,’ said Joleta in a low voice.
‘Regrets, Joleta?’ said Lymond. Dressed for rough riding, in his white shirt and sleeveless leather jack, the soft deerskin boots pulled high over his hose, empty-handed and bareheaded, he looked, beside their dishevelled turbulence, patiently authoritative. No one yet had laid hands on him. His blue gaze, diamond-hard, rested on the girl’s breathtaking face. ‘Why not tell Sir Graham the truth? It won’t be pleasant if he finds out when you are together and alone. Here, you have three hundred protectors.’
‘What truth?’ said Graham Malett slowly, and turning his own head, he studied his sister’s thin face. And still in the same slow, almost caressing voice, ‘Why did you not call for help, Joleta?’
Nicolas de Nicolay, arrived unnoticed behind them all, took a breath just in time to save himself from suffocation. Diable de diable de diable de diable … the boy was going to do it. My only hope, he had said, is to drive a wedge between Joleta and her brother. But how to do it, without revealing that he knew all? Launch into half-proved excuses for his behaviour here and on Malta, and they would lose patience and attack. He must have time, for his witnesses and his evidence to be brought in unmolested. So … if only this powerful Gabriel might be led to think that he could not trust his sister … if only his sister might be brought to realize that once alone, her brother might turn against her, she might—she just might—desert Sir Graham for a safe and winning side.…
‘You see,’ Lymond had said, towards the end of that meeting