Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [293]
With one long, slender finger, the Dowager traced the ferny pattern of her gown. Without looking up she said, ‘And, of course, if you or Mr Guthrie or Mr Hoddim or my other son were to come forward now with your evidence, your lives would be exposed to attack by Sir Graham. While you are in hiding, you are safe too.’
‘He has that in mind. Lady Culter,’ said Adam Blacklock, his brown eyes direct. ‘If we believed it would serve any purpose, my friends and I would have accused Sir Graham long since.’
Sybilla flashed him an abstracted smile. ‘What an obstinate band of young men you are,’ she said. ‘The leadership of St Mary’s! What does it matter? For leading an unruly assembly, for disobedience, for causing trouble in Ireland, what can they do to him? Fine him, perhaps; keep him in prison until his temper cools. Even if the worst happens and Gabriel goes free, Francis is most unlikely to be asked by law to forfeit his life. So that all this endeavour and all this danger is endured for one reason: the leadership of one excellent small force, which Francis cannot bear to see fall into the wrong hands. Does it matter?’ Turning, she confronted the artist, her neatly capped white head cocked, her brows straight. ‘Or is Francis merely bewitched by his own little creation?’
It was Richard Crawford, standing solid and quiet just inside the door, listening, who answered. ‘Francis knows very well what he has done. He has bred a terror in a small nation such as this which could jeopardize the balance of nations and overthrow kings. And he has placed this power in the hands of Graham Malett. Should Gabriel learn what is being plotted against him and fly, he would still be able to take this force with him, virtually intact. This axe may be poised yet to the glory of Gabriel over more defenceless heads than we dream.’
‘It won’t happen,’ said Adam Blacklock abruptly; and bending, he kissed Sybilla’s idle hand, pressed it, and left. And as the throat-constricting silence after that threatened to continue. ‘Don’t think about it,’ said Philippa quickly. ‘Look, here’s Kevin.’ And diving for the door, she lifted from the surprised hands of his passing nurse the vibrating red bolster which was Kevin Crawford, Master of Culter, and sat him on his grandmother’s lap.
‘Mother always says,’ said Philippa, ‘that when the worst is happening and your knees are rattling like Swiss drummers, there’s nothing like a baby to give you a sense of proportion.’
She did not know then why it misfired. She only knew that at her side, Lord Culter stood dumbly staring at his son, and that Sybilla, her arms embracing that small rotundity, with the red cheeks and black feathery curls and deep, blue-black Irish eyes of Mariotta his mother, bent her head on his dark one and cried.
*
At Boghall and at Branxholm, they also waited. Jenny Fleming, chained by her history to Boghall castle, far from Court, paced her room and visited her royal bastard in his nursery, and wrote long, placating letters to the Constable of France. Her daughter Margaret, waiting in silence for news from the arsenal which was St Mary’s, knew that her mother was obsessed with the need to return to France, to love and power, and gaiety and admiration. Anything, even the courtly respect with which M. d’Oisel had treated her, was fuel to her determination.
As the wife of the French King’s Lieutenant in Scotland, she could return with him to France and to a place in society which would surely include the attentions, however discreet, of the King. Diane was old. The Queen was becoming stouter and plainer. Or if Francis Crawford had been a less fickle child of fortune.… He was wealthy. He had a comté….
‘Don’t fret, child,