Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [278]
The truth was a single fact—de Nicolay knew it already: the fact that Joleta’s illness at Flaw Valleys was nothing less than the results of an abortion; and that, as Trotty had learned from her ravings, Joleta had already borne a child, already known many men when in Malta. A simple fact, but substantiated now, with all it implied, by this distraught girl who had no cause to love Lymond, it withdrew with one bloodless pull the barb from all Lymond had done. And by the same token, drew all the listening, curious faces to where Graham Malett stood panting, sick-white in the torchlight, his dilated eyes on the far steps where his sister was crouched.
‘Philippa!’ said Lymond’s voice. Nicolas had used the interval, with spry effectiveness, to unshackle and lower him, talking all the time fiercely, thoughtlessly, in French. ‘Do you hear me, Francis? You were right. Someone was afraid of Philippa’s secret. But this was the damaging information she possessed, not Paris’s stupid affair.’ Pausing, Nicolas de Nicolay clucked his tongue; then leaning forward on wet knees, put his warm hands over Lymond’s icy ones, cramped on the wet flags as he lay. ‘It vindicates you. Do you see it? The baby Joleta expects might be anyone’s now!’
‘You sound as if you … didn’t believe it before,’ said Francis Crawford’s voice, muffled, but not missing by much its usual note. He raised himself a fraction and said more clearly, ‘If that’s blood, I ought to be dead: oh God, no: it’s raining … I can’t turn round. Tell me what’s happening.’
‘Jerott is coming over here. Gabriel is saying nothing, simply staring across at Joleta, and Joleta has got up, hurriedly. Bell’s got well back.’
‘She’s right to be frightened. He’ll cast her off now. He’s got to, for his own sake. Shock, Christian outrage, shattered love—all the rest. Either that or admit he’s been pimping for the woman all along.’
It was then that he called Philippa and she came rushing to him; then hesitated and, scowling, knelt slowly down at his side. There was blood, streaming rosy with rainwater over the bruised white skin of his face, and blood, liquid and black, shining through the light cloak de Nicolay had laid over his back, but he turned slowly, his weight on his elbow, and said, ‘You knew you might be killed if you rode out of Flaw Valleys.… You wouldn’t have made Kate very happy. Or me.’
‘You have to pay for your mistakes,’ Philippa said hardily. From white, in the dim light, she had turned poppy red.
Lymond said quietly, ‘You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don’t know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don’t build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose.’ He paused, and said, ‘Est conformis precedenti. I owe the Somervilles rather a lot already.’
Philippa’s unwinking brown gaze flickered shiftily at the Latin and then steadied. ‘I should have told you before. You don’t mind?’
‘If you had told me before, you might not have decided to have me for a friend. I don’t mind,’ said Francis Crawford and told, for once, the bare truth.
They took her indoors then, dazed with reaction. Cheese-wame was safe, left in a house Adam knew of. And she had come in time—surely in time, to undo a little of the harm. And she had made a friend.
The moment she had gone Lymond moved, his soaked fair head heavy, first to his knees, then back on his heels, then, laboriously, pulled by Blacklock and the geographer, to his feet. As his spine took the weight he drew a long, sobbing breath and stood perfectly still. ‘Le malheureux lion languissant, triste et morne … Peut à peine rugir,’ he said, though his eyes were closed. He opened them. ‘He didn’t much like seeing Joleta’s trade-mark, did he? I wonder if I could walk to where Joleta is?’ And glancing in passing at the sodden revelry around him where, like children in a