Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [274]
‘But yes,’ said the Chevalier de Seurre; and releasing Randy Bell’s hand, he stepped aside, followed at once by his fellow-officers, to let the men who had obeyed Lymond for a year pour through to where he stood.
Or had stood. For suddenly he was up on the table behind him, a candlestick in one hand and a heavy pot in the other, swinging them experimentally, the flame of battle and a kind of wild laughter filling his face. ‘Convicted,’ said Lymond, ‘of using unreverent language to the bailies again, the prisoner resisted arrest, bestowing three bloody noses and a sprained pinky.… Come along, children. You have to get me from here to the whipping-post—oh, Jerott! How conventional !—without killing me on the way. A bagatelle. Vive la bagatelle!’
But by that time, they were on him. He did more damage than his officers, watching, would have thought possible in the few seconds available. Then they all, Gabriel, white-faced, with Joleta close in his arm, followed the struggling, drunken mob slowly out of the hall and downstairs to the great doors, as they dragged their talkative commander feet first, bumping and rolling, down to the cool darkness outside.
The post, a massive, manacled cross of oak, stood severe as a schoolmistress in the wide shining reaches of the yard. The rain had stopped. The cressets brought by the provident burned twice, clear and bright, in the still air and on the dark, river-like paving underfoot. The din, so ringingly loud in the hall, became thin and bodiless, interlaced with its own echoes in space, and more frantic as the fresh air began to work on the sherry-sack.
Twice Jerott and once Lancelot Plummer had interfered when the assault on Lymond had taken a savage fervour that offered small hope for the bagatelle. Jerott thought of that mocking phrase as he beat his men off, cursing. He had looked, as he uttered it, like a man who had won a contest, not lost it. There was about him, in all his viciousness, his waywardness, his insolence, an aspect of sheer, blistering courage that caught Jerott by the throat. It recalled other times to him—he had risked his life in that underground hell in Tripoli, risked it ten times over—and, you could tell by the numbers who now, their passion lessened, dropped from the crowd and hesitated, as he did, on the fringe—you could tell that others were reminded, too, of other occasions here at St Mary’s. But at the core were those whose bitter resentment on Gabriel’s behalf still carried them forward; who had suffered from Lymond’s merciless tongue; who had themselves paid at this post. And those, like Bell and Plummer and Tait and the Knights of the Order, who seeing the finer implications of all he had done, could never condone it.
Through it all, Francis Crawford himself was quite conscious. They were keen, in any case, to revive him if ever his handling proved more than he could bear. He had half lost consciousness a few times but continued, automatically with a highly specialized form of resistance that taught them a few things, embarrassingly, that even at St Mary’s they had yet to learn. Then they got him to the post and kicked him to keep him quiet while they chained him, and he did call out then, once, and choked, strapped inescapably in their view, with the nausea of the blow.
‘So you receive your wages,’ said Graham Malett’s low, beautiful voice. The crowd by the post parted, their work done, and stepped back a little as Graham Malett came forward, a fire-stick in his hand, and relinquishing his sister to Jerott’s arm, walked round to face the man he had befriended.
Spreadeagled on his own post, his breathing tumultuous, his face livid under its bloodstreaked and battered skin, his jack gone and his fine shirt in shreds, Lymond stared