Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [273]
‘Then why didn’t she?’ Lady Jenny had asked with tremendous decorum. ‘Did she have reason to hope, perhaps, that she might … tame you yet?’
‘It is probably what she told Sir Graham,’ Lymond had replied thoughtfully, his wide eyes on Jenny’s small, handsome face. ‘Myself … I doubt it.’
Youthful arrogance, Gabriel had said. There was something in it. Francis Crawford knew his own powers very well. And yet he had never, from the beginning, underestimated Gabriel. He was afraid; he had spoken cold-bloodedly at Boghall of his fear of Graham Malett. Not of injury, not even of death, except that if he died, Gabriel would have won. In the duel now reaching its unavoidable climax here, only Lymond, fighting with all the arts he possessed, knew what depended on the outcome. To Gabriel, contemptuous, loftily confident as he must be, this must seem no more than the final brushing aside of the pawn he had selected and toyed with, and which had proved a little more troublesome than he had anticipated. So, ‘Why did you not call for help, Joleta?’ asked Sir Graham; and Lymond, his gaze still locked in the girl’s, said gently, ‘Because she didn’t dare. Adam Blacklock, when he comes, will tell you. I’m sorry, Sir Graham. I was not the first. And I shall not be the last. The child is not mine.’
Nicolas de Nicolay swallowed and, for a moment, he himself felt a twinge of unaccustomed coldness. Lymond knew that this was not the reason, and that both Gabriel and his sister were aware that it was not. Yet he put it forward, deliberately, as he might be expected in his ignorance to do, thus rubbing, rubbing on the one small spot of friction between Gabriel and his sister. Had she, somewhere among the wildness and the cruelty, found an affinity with Lymond? Would she betray her brother? So Gabriel must be thinking.
And then, at once, the big, golden knight showed his mastery: showed that Lymond had been right to be afraid. He drew Joleta towards him, and holding her close to his shabby doublet, her silken hair pressed to his breast, he said huskily, ‘They are trying to drive me from you. It isn’t true. I will never believe it. And I will prove it on his body.’ And, looking straight at Lymond above Joleta’s still, downcast profile, he said, ‘Give him his sword.’
And that could have only one result. The vociferous, calling voices around him rose in raucous dissent and Jerott, a rock in the struggling tide, said, raising his own voice, ‘You can’t lead St Mary’s dead or outlawed. We should present this man to justice for justice to deal with.’
‘Provided,’ said de Seurre’s thin, cutting voice at his side, shoulder to shoulder with Plummer, with Tait, with even a white-faced des Roches, holding back with their broad shoulders the impatient, violent surge from behind, ‘Provided that St Mary’s is allowed to execute its own justice first.’
Only Jerott Blyth hesitated. He did not see de Nicolay begin, burrowing like a desperate mole, to fight his way, sword in hand, to Lymond’s side, knowing that it was too late; Lymond must have known that nothing he might say would be listened to now. Jerott hesitated, and in that second caught a half-smile, incredibly, as Lymond’s blue eyes rested on him for a moment, and a fractional shrug of the shoulders as if he accepted, with resignation, the foolishness of man. Lifting his sword, on equal impulse Jerott reversed it, and slammed it home in the scabbard. Then, turning, he thrust his way back through the crowd until he reached the dais, and leaped up on it.
‘Dear Jerott,’ said Lymond. De Nicolay, stopped not far away, saw that he was rather white, but that his eyes, brilliantly blue, were as calm as his voice. ‘He’s going to tell everyone, for the sake of their souls, to put their little hatchets away and use their good, honest Christian fists instead. There he goes. St Mary’s mustn’t murder their commander. An excellent point. I seem to remember making it myself. Nor could they leave the offence